Dielectric properties of BiFeO3 ceramics obtained from mechanochemically synthesized nanopowders

Dielectric behaviour of BiFeO3 ceramics,obtained by hot-pressing of nanopowders produced by mechanochemical synthesis from Bi2O3 and Fe2O3 oxides (weight ratio 2:1), was studied in the temperature range 125–575 K. The ceramics was found to exhibit step-like dielectric response ε*(T) with high permittivity values, similar to the behaviour of materials with giant dielectric permittivity. Three overlapping relaxation processes contribute to the dielectric response: i) relaxation in the lowtemperature range (220–420 K), characterized by activation energy of 0.4 eV, ii) relaxation in the temperature range 320–520 K with activation energy of 1.0 eV and iii) broad dielectric anomaly in the vicinity of 420 K, which disappears after 1 h annealing at 775 K. The lowtemperature relaxation is ascribed to the carrier hopping process between Fe2+ and Fe3+ ions. The presence of mixed valence of the Fe ions was proved by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Dielectric relaxation in the middle-temperature range is considered as a result of grain boundary effect and internal barrier layers related to Bi25FeO40 phase as verified by X-ray diffraction. The high-temperature dielectric anomaly we relate to short-range hopping of ordered oxygen vacancies

Dielectric properties of BiFeO3 ceramics obtained from mechanochemically synthesized nanopowders

Dielectric behaviour of BiFeO3 ceramics,obtained by hot-pressing of nanopowders produced by mechanochemical synthesis from Bi2O3 and Fe2O3 oxides (weight ratio 2:1), was studied in the temperature range 125–575 K. The ceramics was found to exhibit step-like dielectric response ε*(T) with high permittivity values, similar to the behaviour of materials with giant dielectric permittivity. Three overlapping relaxation processes contribute to the dielectric response: i) relaxation in the lowtemperature range (220–420 K), characterized by activation energy of 0.4 eV, ii) relaxation in the temperature range 320–520 K with activation energy of 1.0 eV and iii) broad dielectric anomaly in the vicinity of 420 K, which disappears after 1 h annealing at 775 K. The lowtemperature relaxation is ascribed to the carrier hopping process between Fe2+ and Fe3+ ions. The presence of mixed valence of the Fe ions was proved by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Dielectric relaxation in the middle-temperature range is considered as a result of grain boundary effect and internal barrier layers related to Bi25FeO40 phase as verified by X-ray diffraction. The high-temperature dielectric anomaly we relate to short-range hopping of ordered oxygen vacancies

Dielectric study of the glass transition: correlation with calorimetric data

The glass transition in amorphous poly(ethylene terephthalate) is studied by thermally stimulated depolarization currents (TSDC) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The ability of TSDC to decompose a distributed relaxation, as the glass transition, into its elementary components is demonstrated. Two polarization techniques, windows polarization (WP) and non-isothermal windows polarization (NIW), are employed to assess the influence of thermal history in the results. The Tool-Narayanaswami-Moynihan (TNM) model has been used to fit the TSDC spectra. The most important contributions to the relaxation comes from modes with non-linearity (x) around 0.7. Activation energies yield by this model are located around 1eV for polarization temperature (Tp) below 50C and they raise up to values higher than 8eV as Tp increases (up to 80C). There are few differences between results obtained with WP and NIW but, nonetheless, these are discussed. The obtained kinetic parameters are tested against DSC results in several conditions. Calculated DSC curves at several cooling and heating rates can reproduce qualitatively experimental DSC results. These results also demonstrate that modelization of the non-equilibrium kinetics involved in TSDC spectroscopy is a useful experimental tool for glass transition studies in polar polymers.Comment: 13 pages, 2 tables, 10 figures; minor change