Electrical properties of BaSn(1-x)SbxO3 ceramics materials

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.