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Effects of In2O3 doping on microstructure and electrical properties of ZnO low-voltage varistor

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Abstract

In this work, high-performance ZnO–Bi2O3 based low-voltage varistors were prepared by doping In2O3. When the breakdown voltage was low, the varistor obtained a relatively high nonlinear coefficient. Through systematic research on the microstructure and electrical properties of the ZnO varistor doped with In2O3, it was found that when In2O3 was co-doped with TiO2, it was beneficial to improve the grain boundary barrier of the low-voltage varistor, resulting in an increase in the nonlinear coefficient and a decrease in the leakage current. Among them, when the doping amount of In2O3 was 0.012 mol%, the electrical performance was the best, the threshold voltage was 191 V/mm, the nonlinear coefficient was 37.1, and the leakage current was 0.42 μA. At the same time, the doping of In2O3 increased the grain boundary resistance, which was beneficial to improve the electrical stability of the samples.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52072004), the Key Research and Development Program of Anhui Province (No. 2022i01020008) and State Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Electronic Components (No. FHR-JS-202011006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, Ma’anshan, 243002, People’s Republic of China

    Mengyang Shi, Juan Liu, Bing Cui, Ming Jiang & Dong Xu

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui Polytechnic University, Wuhu, 241000, People’s Republic of China

    Mengyang Shi & Dong Xu

  3. Zhengzhou Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering Co., Ltd., Zhengzhou, 450001, People’s Republic of China

    Zhan Cheng, Yongtao Jiu & Dong Xu

  4. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Electronic Components, Zhaoqing, 526000, People’s Republic of China

    Bin Tang

Authors
  1. Mengyang Shi
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  4. Ming Jiang
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  8. Dong Xu
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Contributions

MS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, preparation, Experiment, Writing. JL: draft Visualization, Experiment, Analyzing Writing. BC: Supervision, Data curation. MJ: Supervision. ZC: Investigation. YJ: Investigation. BT: Conceptualization. DX: Guiding. All authors read the paper and commented on the text.

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Correspondence to Dong Xu.

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Shi, M., Liu, J., Cui, B. et al. Effects of In2O3 doping on microstructure and electrical properties of ZnO low-voltage varistor. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 33, 19242–19251 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-08762-0

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