The effects of donor dopant concentration on the grain boundary layer characteristics in n-doped BaTiO3 ceramics

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Abstract
Positive temperature coefficient of resistance BaTiO3 specimens containing different donor dopant concentrations of Ho ranging from 0.05 to 1.8 at. % were investigated. The intergranular barrier layer capacitance per unit area, C’L, measured at a constant frequency of 30 kHz at both 40 and 160 °C was found to be proportional to the donor concentration up to 0.55 at. %, but then began to decrease as the donor concentration was increased beyond this. This indicated that both the density of acceptor states at the grain surfaces, Ns, and the relative permittivity εL of the material within the barrier layer were not affected by donor impurity concentrations below 0.55 at. % Ho. However, above this level of Ho concentration, the decrease in C’L appears to be related mainly to an increase in the value of Ns although it is possible that there were changes in εL. Initially both the maximum resistance and the room‐temperature resistance (normalized per grain boundary per unit area), ρ’max and ρcold, respectively, were found to decrease sharply with donor concentration towards a broad minimum between ∼0.5 and ∼1.5 at. %, followed thereafter by a gradual increase. The temperature Tmax at which ρ’max occurred was also affected by the donor concentration; initially Tmax was found to increase with donor concentration followed by a reduction forming a broad maximum between about the same donor concentration limits corresponding to the minima in ρcold and ρ’max. These results are interpreted in terms of the well‐established Heywang model.