Dielectric relaxation studies in Sm2O3 doped boro-zinc-vanadate glasses

Abstract

In this work, the conventional melting procedure was adopted to synthesize glasses with a composition of (ZnO)0.3 – (V2O5)0.3 – (B2O3)0.4-x – (Sm2O3)x, x = 0.002, 0.005, 0.007, 0.01 and 0.02 mol%. The dielectric properties of these glasses were measured. The dielectric constant (εʹ) and dielectric loss (εʹʹ) of glasses are found to vary in the range from 1.9177x102 to 3.9456x103 and from 1.5751 to 6.9095x105 respectively for the temperature range 343 K – 573 K and frequency range 50 Hz to 10 MHz. With increase of frequency, both dielectric constant and loss decreased and increased with increase of temperature. The analysis of dielectric constant and dielectric loss confirmed that the phenomenon of dielectric relaxation is mainly due to the frequency-dependent polarization mechanism. Electric modulus and impedence spectroscopy revealed non-Debye type and a single phase relaxation process. Activation energy for dc conductivity and dielectric relaxation are found to be of same size indicating that the potential barrier encountered by the charge carriers is same in both the processes. The master curves suggested that temperature-independent relaxation is occurring in the present glasses. The high values of measured dielectric parameters suggest that the present glasses are suitable in semiconducting and energy storage applications.