Ferroelectric properties of barium calcium titanate ceramics doped with bismuth oxide

Ferroelectric properties of Bi doped (Ba1-xCax)(0.925)Bi0.05TiO3(Bi-BCT, 0.10<x<0.30) ceramic prepared by the solid-state technique have been studied. An interesting double-like hysteresis (P-E) loop at room temperature (300 K) with the remarkable linear dielectric response was observed over a certain electric field range. Room temperature P-E loops before and after de-aging, as well as those at different values of field cycling, could exclude the possibility that the double P-E loops might result from the anti ferroelectric components and the electric field induced paraelectric-ferroelectric (PE-FE) transition near Curie temperature (T-c) in Bi-BCT, and verify that there exists a diffusional aging effect in Bi-BCT. A symmetry-conforming short-range ordering (SC-SRO) of point defects is suggested to be responsible for the observations of the interesting double-like P-E loop in Bi-BCT. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved