Anomalous change in leakage and displacement currents after electrical poling on lead-free ferroelectric ceramics

Abstract

We report the polarization, displacement current, and leakage current behavior of a trivalent nonpolar cation (Al3+) substituted lead free ferroelectric (Na0.46Bi0.46-xAlxBa0.08)TiO3 (NBAT-BT) (x = 0, 0.05, 0.07 and 0.10) electroceramics with tetragonal phase and P4 mm space group symmetry. Almost, three orders of magnitude decrease in leakage current were observed under electrical poling, which significantly improves microstructure, polarization, and displacement current. Effective poling neutralizes the domain pinning, traps charges at grain boundaries and fills oxygen vacancies with free charge carriers in matrix, thus saturated macroscopic polarization in contrast to that in unpoled samples. E-poling changes "bananas" type polarization loops to real ferroelectric loops.