Electrical properties and dielectric relaxation behavior of zirconium vanadate

Negative thermal expansion materials, such as zirconium vanadate (ZrV2O7), have attracted considerable interest due to potential applications on tailoring the coefficient of thermal expansion. This paper studied ZrV2O7 transport properties. ZrV2O7 had electrical conductivity a = 3.56 x 10(-3) S/cm at 573 K, significantly larger than other NTE ceramics, such as Sc2W3O12, and activation energy E-a, = 0.319 eV, calculated from Arrhenius plots for total conductivity. Resistance decreased as temperature increased from room temperature to 400 K, ascribed to increasing carrier concentration and small lattice constant. Conductivity rapidly increased as temperature increased from 423 to 573 K, but high electron scattering probability led to little further conductivity changes from 573 to 673 K. Dielectric constant = 15.8 at high frequency (> 10 MHz), which could enable significant enhancement for high frequency electronic devices.