Electrical properties of ferroelectric BiMnO _3-PbTiO _3 under tailored synthesis and ceramic processing

摘要

Conductivity is a main issue in research on multiferroic perovskite oxides, which makes the characterization of their ferroelectric properties difficult, and for several compounds even to unambiguously state their ferroelectric nature. In this report, we use ferroelectric BiMnO3-PbTiO_3 as a model system to study the relationships among synthesis, processing, and conductivity in ABO3 perovskite oxides with magnetically active cations in the B-site. Three single phase, dense ceramic materials processed by conventional sintering, hot pressing, or spark plasma sintering (SPS) of powders synthesized by either wet chemistry or mechanochemical activation were studied. Impedance spectroscopy analysis was carried out to obtain grain and grain boundary conductivities for the three materials, along with activation energies. Mechanosynthesis is shown not to modify the mechanism of bulk or boundary conductivity, but only the carrier concentration, while SPS processing results in a low temperature, additional conduction mechanism.