Mecanismos de condução e relaxação elétrica em cerâmicas multiferróicas de Pb(Fe2/3W1/3)O3 e Pb(Fe1/2Nb1/2)O3

Abstract

Multiferroic are materials which have at least two of the three ferroics orders: ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and/or ferroelasticity. The coupling between these properties, make multiferroic materials of great technological and scientific interest, mainly in the design of new devices such as sensors and spintronic devices. The lead iron tungstate Pb(Fe2=3W1=3)O3 (PFW) is a relaxor multiferroic with ferroelectric transition TC ~ 180K and antiferromagnetic TN ~ 340K, it is a member of the relaxor ferroelectrics family with perovskite structure, in which the two types of cations (Fe3+ e W6+) are randomly distributed in the B site, causing the formation of polar nanoregions (or clusters) of order/disorder at microscopic scale, which would be the origin of the relaxor behavior. Lead iron niobate Pb(Fe1=2Nb1=2)O3 (PFN) is a ferroelectric with diffuse phase transition (DPT) around TC ~ 380K and antiferromagnetic, with the G-type ordering below the Néel temperature, reported in TN ~ 143K. This material has a high dielectric constant, and excellent ferroelectric properties. The Pb2+, at site A, and Nb5+, at site B are responsible for the ferroelectric order, as the Fe3+ at site B is responsible to provide the necessary magnetic moment for the magnetic ordering. In this work, the electrical conduction and relaxation mechanism of multiferroics PFW and PFN ceramics were investigated. The PFW and PFN samples were prepared by solid state reaction method through two stages. This method was effective to obtain samples with majoritary perovskite phase (95,6% and 95,7%), respectively. After the densification process through sintering methods used in this work (conventional sintering, hot pressing and spark plasma), the perovskite phase was increased, being almost 100 %. The samples of PFW and PFN obtained by the different densification techniques, were dense and practically free of pores. For the analysis of the dielectric response of the samples, it was proposed in this work, an analysis protocol, which was effective to find the responsible mechanisms for the dielectric response of the studied materials. Two relaxation processes were identified for each studied sample, which were labeled as: PR-1, PR-2 or PR *. These processes can be attributed to the interfacial polarization and polarization by hopping, occurring due to the presence of defects in the lattice, such as the oxygen vacancies and lead vacancies. From the dependence of the DC electrical conductivity versus temperature, it was possible to identify regions with different mechanisms of electrical conduction for the samples of PFW and PFN. These mechanisms are, thermally activated at high temperatures, hopping of small polarons at intermediate temperatures and variable range hopping at low temperatures.