AC conductivity and scaling studies of polycrystalline SnF2

The conduction characteristics of SnF2 from room temperature (300 K) to 463 K have been investigated by using impedance spectroscopy. The temperature dependent conductivity plot shows a break in conductivity around 443 K corresponding to the alpha -> gamma phase transition temperature. The electrical properties of SnF2 are also investigated by extracting dielectric and modulus data from impedance values. The frequency dependent plots of M '' and Z '' show that the conductivity relaxation is non-Debye in nature. The activation energy responsible for relaxation has been calculated from the modulus spectra and is found to be almost the same as that from the temperature dependent dc conductivity data. The real part of conductivity and permittivity in addition to the modulus spectra of the present system show scaling behavior, which means sigma'(omega), epsilon'(omega) and M'(omega) isotherms successfully collapse to a single master curve indicating that the relaxation mechanism is temperature independent. Different scaling approaches have been applied to arrive at a correlation between the scaling parameters. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.