Effect of clay/nepheline tailing ratio on the dielectric relaxation and conduction mechanism of the conventional ceramic

Abstract The dielectric relaxation and conduction mechanism of 40 wt% nepheline tailing and 60 wt% clay-based ceramic, i.e., the 40/60 ceramic, have been investigated over wide ranges of frequency and temperature, using a broadband dielectric spectrometer (BDS) and then compared with the data recently reported for the 50/50 ceramic. Both 40/60 and 50/50 ceramics were fabricated by grinding the raw materials to be very fine, wet homogenously mixing, drying and finally firing at 1200 °C. Their crystalline phases identified by X-ray diffraction were quartz, hematite, cristobalite, and albite. The 40/60 ceramic of lower glassy phase (nepheline tailing) content displays lower crystallinity than the 50/50 ceramic. Its conduction activation energies (E_ac) show values between 0.12 and 0.32 eV, corresponding to the activation energy of oxygen vacancies (Vo⁺⁺ ~ 0.22 eV). As oxygen vacancies migrate at relatively low operating voltages, the fabricated ceramics would be promising in manufacturing the random access memory (RAM), taking into consideration that the 50/50 ceramic is more useful than the 40/60 ceramic. As a result, nepheline tailing or the glassy phase component may generate more oxygen vacancies and thus enhance the ceramic electrical properties. Finally, the conduction mechanism of both ceramics is described via the correlated barrier hopping (CBH) model.