Electrical conductivity and modulus formulation in zinc modified bismuth boro-tellurite glasses

Abstract

The ac conductivity of zinc modified tellurium based quaternary glasses having composition 60 TeO2–10 B2O3–(30 − x) Bi2O3–x ZnO; x = 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 has been investigated in the frequency range 10−1–105 Hz and in temperature range 483–593 K. Frequency and temperature dependent ac conductivity found to obey Jonscher power law modified by Almond–West. DC conductivity, crossover frequency and frequency exponent have been estimated from the fitting of the experimental data of conductivity with Jonscher power law modified by Almond–West. The ac conductivity and its frequency exponent have been analyzed by various theoretical models. In presently studied glasses ac conduction takes place via tunneling of overlapping large polaron tunneling. Activation energy is found to be increased with increase in zinc content and dc conduction takes place via variable range hopping proposed by Mott with some modification suggested by Punia et al. The value of the stretched exponent (β) obtained by fitting of $$ M^{{\prime \prime }} $$ reveals the presence of non-Debye type relaxation. Scaling spectra of ac conductivity and electric modulus collapse into a single master curve for all compositions and temperatures, reveals the presence of composition and temperature independent conduction and relaxation process in these glasses. Activation energy of conduction (W) and electric modulus (E R ) are nearly equal, indicating that polaron have to overcome the same energy barrier during conduction as well as relaxation processes.