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Structures and dielectric properties of (Nb, Zn) co-doped SrTiO3 ceramics at various sintering temperatures

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Abstract

Effects of sintering temperatures on the phases, microstructures, defect structures and dielectric behaviors of the SrTi0.985(Nb2/3Zn1/3)0.015O3 ceramics have been systematically investigated. Giant permittivity (~ 10100) and low tangent loss (~ 0.035) are achieved in the ceramics sintered at 1500 °C. With an increase in sintering temperature, the grain size increases first and then stabilizes gradually, while the lattice constant increases first and then decreases. Higher sintering temperature is beneficial to the thermal stabilities of permittivity and tangent loss. Further investigations reveal that the giant permittivity mainly results from defect polarization. More Ti3+ ions and more oxygen vacancy-related defect complexes (\( {\text{Ti}}^{3 + } - {\text{V}}_{\text{O}}^{ \cdot \cdot } - {\text{Ti}}^{3 + } \) and \( {\text{V}}_{\text{O}}^{ \cdot \cdot } - {\text{Zn}}_{\text{Ti}}^{\prime \prime } \), etc.) are involved in the ceramics sintered at 1500 °C, contributing to the giant permittivity and low tangent loss. The presence of point defects breaks the local structural symmetry and distorts the oxygen octahedron. Dielectric properties are deteriorated at excessive sintering temperature due to the dissociation of defect complexes as well as the enhanced interfacial polarization.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the NSFC-Guangdong Joint Funds of the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U1601209), National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2015CB654601), Technical Innovation Special Program of Hubei Province (2017AHB055), State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology Materials Synthesis and Processing (Wuhan University of Technology) (2018-KF-11), National Natural Science Foundation of China (51872213) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (195101007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, People’s Republic of China

    Wengao Pan, Minghe Cao, Cheng Tao, Hua Hao, Zhonghua Yao & Zhiyong Yu

  2. International School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, People’s Republic of China

    Hanxing Liu

  3. School of Physics and Electronics, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, People’s Republic of China

    Chunli Diao

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  1. Wengao Pan
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Correspondence to Minghe Cao.

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Pan, W., Cao, M., Diao, C. et al. Structures and dielectric properties of (Nb, Zn) co-doped SrTiO3 ceramics at various sintering temperatures. J Mater Sci 54, 12401–12410 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03793-1

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