Influence of temperature on the dielectric nonlinearity of BaTiO3-based multi-layer ceramic capacitors

Abstract

Temperature dependence of the dielectric nonlinearity was investigated for the BaTiO3 multilayer ceramic capacitor. The decrease in temperature caused a significant increase in the degree of dielectric nonlinearity. The Preisach analysis shows that such effect corresponds to a decrease in reversible and a significant increase in irreversible domain wall contribution to polarization. The magnitude of spontaneous polarization (PS) was increased with decreasing temperature. It can be associated with phase transition from pseudo-cubic to monoclinic and its resultant change in the polar direction, which was observed through transmission electron microscopy. These results demonstrate that the increase in PS with the decrease in temperature inhibits domain wall motion in low driving field as it is anticipated to increase the degree of intergranular constraints during domain wall motion. But it results in a more steep increase in the dielectric constants beyond the threshold field where domain wall motion can occur.