Pyroelectric and electronic properties of thick film and thin film Ba_1−xSr_xTiO₃

Abstract

Several compositions of doped and undoped Barium Strontium Titanium Oxide (BSTO) ceramics have been fabricated in tapecast and thin film form. The specimens examined in this paper include a well-known commercially adopted Ba_0.64Sr_0.36TiO₃[1] as well as a composition suggested in the literature[2], and also a patented composition: BSTO / MgO [3]. With respect to doping BSTO with MgO, it has been shown that these materials have reduced dielectric constants and loss tangents (over a very wide frequency range from 100 Hz-10 GHz) [4–7] and thereby, as it will be shown in this report, they should be expected to have increased pyroelectric figure of merit. This article will discuss the processing, material characterization, pyroelectric coefficient, and pyroelectric figure-of-merit of the above mentioned BSTO compositions.