Low-frequency electrical response related to oxygen vacancies in Al<sup>3+</sup> substituted M-type hexaferrite
Hodam Karnajit Singh, Prajna P. Mohapatra, Pamu Dobbidi, Bheema Lingam Chittari
Abstract
Abstract The presence of oxygen vacancies is unavoidable in many complex metal oxide materials such as hexaferrites. This article investigates the role of crystal defects, such as oxygen vacancies, and different oxidation states of Fe ions, on the electrical conduction behaviors of Al 3+ substituted Ba 0.4 La 0.1 Sr 0.5 Al x Fe 12− x O 19 hexaferrites by analyzing the temperature dependent AC impedance and AC conductivity. The optimal substitution of La 3+ ions and high-temperature sintering is responsible for forming oxygen vacancies while reducing Fe from Fe 3+ to Fe 2+ cations, as observed in structural and XPS analysis, which affects electrical conduction behaviors. The departure from ideal Debye-type relaxation behavior is also one of the effects of crystal defects. Temperature variation of relaxation time shows a sharp change at around 403 K. This may be due to different electrical entities influencing the mode of electron hopping with temperature. The activation energy calculated from the temperature dependent relaxation time confirmed the presence of electron hopping through the bridging effects of the first ionization of oxygen vacancies Fe 2+ – <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> <mml:mrow> <mml:mtext>o</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>⋅</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> –Fe 3+ below a temperature of 403 K. Above 403 K, electron hopping through different oxidation states of Fe 3+ + e − → Fe 2+ and migration of oxygen vacancies toward the bulk surface are responsible for the conduction mechanism. The DC resistivity and AC conductivity show that the bridging effects of oxygen defects can also induce Coulomb interaction between the defect sites resulting in Efros–Shklovskii variable range hopping and correlation barrier hopping below 403 K. Above 403 K, polaron-assisted electron hopping is more desirable, as confirmed by the non-overlapping small polaron tunneling model.