S. Devesa¹,², M. P. Graça² and L. C. Costa²
¹CFisUC, Physics Department, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
²I3N and Physics Department, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

Part of the book: Advances in Chemistry Research. Volume 76

Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.52305/ELEG5797

Abstract

Impedance spectroscopy is a powerful and non-destructive technique that can be applied to study the electrical properties of materials and their interfaces with electrodes. It can be used to investigate the dynamics of bound or mobile charge in the bulk or interfacial regions of any kind of solid or liquid material: ionic, semiconducting, mixed electronic-ionic, and dielectrics. Amongst the dielectrics that have been widely studied, the bismuth niobate based materials are very interesting, due to their physical properties. It is important to refer that bismuth niobate, BiNbO4, at ambient pressure, presents two polymorphs structures, a low temperature orthorhombic (α) phase and a high temperature triclinic (β) phase. The main goal of this work is to perform the dielectric characterization of a bismuth niobate based ceramic, applying the impedance spectroscopy technique, and relate these characteristics with their structural and morphologic properties. For that, the (1-x)α-BiNbO4 – xFeNbO4 and (1-x)β-BiNbO4 – xFeNbO4 (x = 0.25, 0.50, 0.75) samples were prepared using the solid state reaction method. The obtained powders were pressed into pellets and heat-treated at 700ºC. The samples structure was characterized by X-ray diffraction and the morphology by scanning electron microscopy. The dielectric characterization was performed using impedance spectroscopy, in the frequency range of 102 -106 Hz, in function of temperature (200-400 K). The dielectric properties, such as dielectric constant (ε′) and dielectric losses (ε′′), were described as a function of composition and treatment temperature, and also discussed as a function of frequency at various temperatures. The dielectric relaxation mechanisms were studied using the complex modulus formalism and the activation energy of the relaxation processes was calculated by fitting the experimental data to the Arrhenius model. An important observation was that, in general, and despite the precursor, orthorhombic or triclinic bismuth niobate, both dielectric constant and losses increase with the rise of the iron niobate content.

Keywords: impedance spectroscopy, dielectric response, bismuth niobate, iron niobate

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