In the current study, Bi2/3Cu3Ti4O12 (BCTO) ceramics were prepared by mechanical ball mill of the elemental oxides followed by conventional sintering of the powder without any pre-sintering heat treatments. The sintering temperature was in the range 950-990 °C, which is 100-150 °C lower than the previous conventional sintering studies on BCTO ceramics. All the ceramic samples showed body-centered cubic phase and grain size ≈ 2-6 μm. Sintering temperature in the range 950-975 °C resulted in comparatively lower dielectric loss and lower thermal coefficient of permittivity in the temperature range from -50 to 120 °C. All the BCTO ceramics showed reasonably high relative permittivity. The behavior of BCTO ceramics was correlated with the change in oxygen content in the samples with sintering temperature. This interpretation was supported by the measurements of the energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) elemental analysis and activation energy for conduction and for relaxation in the ceramics.
Keywords: ceramics; relative permittivity; relaxation; sintering.