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

• The ferro–paraelectric phase transition is found in this work at 238 K.
• The transition phases in this compound are characterized by the electrical and dielectric study.
• The conduction mechanisms that provide the conduction in this material are determined.

The [(C2H5)NH3]2CuCl4 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 (σg) and direct current conductivity (σdc) confirm the observed transitions in the calorimetric study. The (AC) electrical conduction in [(C2H5)NH3]2CuCl4 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, II, IV, V and VI.

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