DC Aging Mechanism of Co₂O₃-Doped ZnO Varistors

• Main Authors: Xia Zhao, Haibin Shen, Men Guo, Ziming He, Yupeng Li, Ran Wen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: ZnO varistors; DC aging; double Schottky barrier; point defects
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/13/4011

Lowered power loss and asymmetrically electrical parameters are reported in the DC aging of Co₂O₃-doped ZnO varistors in this paper. Based on the frequency domain dielectric responses of the pristine and degraded samples, the present study explores the roles of point defects in the aging process via dielectric relaxations and their parameters. It is found that breakdown field increased more in the positive direction than the negative direction. Nonlinearity increased in the positive direction, whereas it decreased in the negative direction, and leakage current density increased more in the negative direction than the positive direction. Given the lowest migration energy of Zinc interstitial (Zn_i, 0.57 eV) and high oxygen ion conductivity in Bi₂O₃-rich phase, it is speculated that Zni and adsorbed oxygen (O_ad) migrate under DC bias, and then change the defect structure and the double Schottky barrier (DSB) at grain boundaries. As a result, the forward-biased barrier height gradually decreases more than the reverse-biased one.