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Investigation on electrical transport properties of nanocrystalline WO3 under high pressure

  • Ceramics
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Abstract

The electrical transport properties of nanocrystalline tungsten trioxides (WO3) under high pressures have been investigated by various electrical measurements up to 36.5 GPa. The discontinuous changes in direct-current resistivity under high pressures result from two electronic phase transitions at 4.3 and 10.5 GPa and two structural phase transitions at 24.8 and 31.6 GPa. Hall-effect measurement shows that the nanocrystalline WO3 is n-type semiconductor within the whole investigated pressure range. The carrier concentration decreases monotonously with increasing pressure, but mobility increases first and then decreases at 10.4 GPa. Through alternate-current impedance measurement, it can be found that the variation of the ratio of grain boundary resistance to grain resistance synchronizes with that of the mobility under high pressures, indicating that the grain boundary plays more important role in the carrier transport process of nanocrystalline WO3. The discontinuous changes of resistance and relaxation frequency of grain and grain boundary also provide the evidence for electronic phase transitions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11674404, 11374121, 11404133, 11774126, 11604133, 61605145 and 61504093), the Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials (Jilin University) (Grant No. 201709) and the Tianjin Basic Science Foundation (Tianjin Polytechnic University) (Grant No. TJPUZK20170203), the Initial Foundation for Doctor Program of Tianjin Polytechnic University (Grant No. 030562) and Tianjin Research Program of Application Foundation and Advanced Technology (Grant Nos. 15JCQNJC41800 and 13JCYBJC37800).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Electrical Engineering and Energy Technology, School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin, 300387, People’s Republic of China

    Yuqiang Li, Pingfan Ning & Pingjuan Niu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Institute of Atomic and Molecular Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, People’s Republic of China

    Yuqiang Li, Yang Gao, Cailong Liu, Yonghao Han, Qinglin Wang, Yan Li & Chunxiao Gao

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 79409, USA

    Yuqiang Li, Yang Gao, Qinglin Wang & Yanzhang Ma

  4. Shandong Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Science and Technology, School of Physics Science and Information Technology, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, 252059, People’s Republic of China

    Qinglin Wang

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  1. Yuqiang Li
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Correspondence to Yonghao Han or Chunxiao Gao.

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Li, Y., Gao, Y., Liu, C. et al. Investigation on electrical transport properties of nanocrystalline WO3 under high pressure. J Mater Sci 53, 6339–6349 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2001-5

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