Effect of sintering atmosphere on the microstructure and dielectric properties of barium strontium titanate glass–ceramics

Abstract

The sintering of barium strontium titanate glass–ceramics in nitrogen modified their dielectric properties significantly compared to the sintering in air. The experimental results demonstrate that the glass–ceramics sintered at low temperatures contain a major phase Ba2TiSi2O8 (BTS), known as fresnoite. The fresnoite phase disappeared and the barium strontium titanate perovskite phase became the major phase when the sintering temperature was increased. In addition, the microstructure observation showed that both the proportion of crystal phase and the crystal size increase obviously with the increase of sintering temperature. Most importantly, impedance spectroscopy has been employed to study the electrical responses arising from the glass and the crystal phases in the glass–ceramics sintered at low temperatures and high temperatures. The magnitudes of impedance and modulus changed significantly for the glass–ceramics sintered at the two temperature ranges. The activation energy calculated from the complex impedance, complex modulus and dc conductivity suggests that the dielectric relaxation for the glass phase and the glass–crystal interface may be attributed to the motion of the dipole associated with oxygen vacancy. And for the barium strontium titanate perovskite glass–ceramics, the motion of the electrons from the second ionization of oxygen vacancies leads to dc electrical conduction. The mechanism for the giant dielectric properties of the glass–ceramics sintered at high temperatures in nitrogen is discussed.