Neodymium and samarium codoped PLZT ferroelectric ceramics for potential betavoltaic nuclear batteries

Abstract

In this work, neodymium (Nd) and samarium (Sm) codoped lead lanthanum zirconate titanate (PLZT) ceramics were prepared by a high-temperature solid-state method. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and ferroelectric analysis. Rare earth-doped PLZT ceramics show good phase formation. An appropriate rare earth element doping amount increases the densities of PLZT ceramics and reduces their resistivities, which is due to the role of rare earth elements in grain refinement. However, the increase in the amount of grain boundaries caused by grain refinement also affects domain inversion. Therefore, with increasing doping concentration, the remnant polarization of PLZT gradually decreases, and the doping of rare earth elements also slightly reduces the band gap of PLZT. Under irradiation with an X-ray simulated beta source with a particle energy of 10 keV (between the average energies of the beta particles of 3H and 63Ni), the ceramic sheets in this work produce current densities of up to 1.38 nA/cm2. This indicates that Nd and Sm codoped PLZT ceramics have a certain potential for application in betavoltaic batteries.