Origin of colossal permittivity in BaTiO3 via broadband dielectric spectroscopy

Barium titanate (BT) ceramics with Ba/Ti ratios of 0.95 and 1.00 were synthesized using spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique. Dielectric spectroscopy (frequency range from 40 Hz to 1MHz and temperature range from 300K to 30K) was performed on those ceramics (SPS BT). SPS BT showed extremely high permittivity up to similar to 10(5), which can be referred to as colossal permittivity, with relatively low dielectric loss of similar to 0.05. Data analyses following Debye relaxation and universal dielectric response models indicate that the origin of colossal permittivity in BT ceramics is the result of a hopping polaron within semiconducting grains in combination with interfacial polarization at the insulating grain boundary. Furthermore, the contributions of each polarization mechanism to the colossal permittivity in SPS BT, such as a hopping polarization, internal barrier layer capacitance effect, and electrode effect, were estimated. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4774099]