Grain boundary behavior in varistor-capacitor TiO2-rich CaCu3Ti4O12 ceramics

Abstract

We prepared TiO2-rich CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) ceramics by a solid-state sintering process and observed large nonlinear electrical and high dielectric behaviors. Microstructure and phase composition analyses show that CCTO grain-amorphous/TiO2 nanograin boundary-CCTO grain junction structures exist in these TiO2-rich CCTO ceramics, which leads to the nonlinear electrical and high dielectric properties. The temperature dependence of impedance spectroscopy and relationships between electrical current density versus applied electrical field indicate that the activation energy of the grain boundary for the TiO2-rich CCTO ceramics is almost the same as the potential barrier height and both of them are weakly independent of the doped concentration of TiO2, which supports the internal barrier layer capacitor model of Schottky barriers at the grain boundaries between semiconducting CCTO grains.