Niobium doping and dielectric anomalies in bismuth titanate

A study of the complex permittivity in bismuth titanate was conducted to reveal the nature of an anomaly in the real part of the permittivity, which occurs below the Curie temperature. This anomaly is frequency dependent and is caused by a combination of two relaxation phenomena that appear in the imaginary part of the permittivity. One of the relaxations showed classic characteristics of an ion-jump process. Niobium doping suppressed this relaxation and eliminated the nonferroelectric anomaly in permittivity, Niobium is proposed to affect the ion-jump relaxation through a decrease in the concentration and possibly the mobility of oxygen vacancies.