Study of crystalline size and strain in rare earth doped Cu modified BZT

Abstract

In three-dimensional cation-oxygen connections, rare earth replacement induces A-site vacancies and deformation, resulting in stochastic local strain with short range coherence. This will modify the electrical and conductive properties of Barium Zirconate Titanate (BZT). Therefore, to make different research on BZT based materials, the study of induced strain and structural modifications due to rare earth doping is necessary. In this context, the current study involves the synthesis of rare earth (Er/Ho) and Cu co-modified Barium Zirconate Titanate (BZT) through a conventional solid state reaction method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique is utilized to gather data for structural analysis such as phase, space group, and lattice parameters for 0.98(BaZr0.05Ti0.95O3)-0.02(CuO:Er2O3) and 0.98(BaZr0.05Ti0.95O3)-0.02(CuO:Ho2O3). Moreover, from the XRD data, the induced strain and crystalline size for differently doped BZT samples have been analysed. In addition to this, Raman spectroscopy is used to authenticate the results obtained from XRD. A successful comparison has been carried out to assess the impact of doping elements and their concentrations on the structural characteristics of the base material BZT.