Electrical properties and conduction mechanism of [C2H5NH3]2CuCl4 compound

The [(C2H5)NH3](2)CuCl4 compound was prepared and characterized by several technique: the X-ray powder diffraction confirms the purity of the synthetized compound, the differential scanning calorimetric show several phase transitions at 236 K, 330 K, 357 K and 371 K, the dialectical properties confirms the ferroelectric paraelectric phase transition at 238 K, which is reported by V. Kapustianyk et al. (2007) [1]. The two semi-circles observed in the complex impedance identify the presence of the grain interior and grain boundary contributions to the electrical response in this material. The equivalent circuit is modeled by a combination series of two parallel RP-CPE circuits. The temperature dependence of the alternative current conductivity (sigma(g)) and direct current conductivity (sigma(dc)) confirm the observed transitions in the calorimetric study. The (AC) electrical conduction in [(C2H5)NH3](2)CuCl4 was studied by two processes that can be attributed to a hopping transport mechanism: the non-overlapping small polaron tunneling (NSPT) model in phase III and the correlated barrier hopping (CBH) model in phases I, H, IV, V and VI. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.