University of Belgrade, Institute for Multidisciplinary Research
Abstract
BaSnO3 is a perovskite oxide widely used as dielectric ceramic material,
thermally stable capacitor in electronic industry and chemical humidity sensor. It is
also an electrical insulator (band gap ~ 3.1 eV), which becomes an n-type conductor
by doping.
The aim of this work was to prepare BaSn(1−x)SbxO3 (BSSO) by
mechanochemically assisted solid-state synthesis, starting from BaCO3, SnO2 and
Sb2O3 as precursors. The concentration of Sb in BSSO was varied from 0.04 to 0.1.
All starting mixtures were homogenized and activated in a planetary ball mill with
isopropanol as a solvent. As-prepared powders were dried and calcined at 900 °C for
4 h. After calcination, powders were uniaxially pressed into pellets and sintered at
temperature of 1200 °C for 3 h. Phase composition and microstructure of perovskite
BSSO were identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy
(SEM), respectively. The influence of Sb doping on electrical characteristics of
ceramic material was determined by measuring the current-voltage characteristics
for all samples at room temperature in air. The band gap values for BSSO calculated
using Kubelka-Munk transformation and Tauc linearization of the obtained diffuse
reflectance spectra, confirmed conductive behavior of preparedceramic samples
