Electrical relaxation studies of solution combustion synthesized nanocrystalline Li2NiZrO4 material

A lithium-rich Li2NiZrO4 is synthesized by solution combustion technique in phase pure nanocrystalline form for the first time. The material is crystallized in the cubic structure of space group Fm3¯m with lattice parameter: a = 4.2457(3) Å and the average crystallites size is 55 nm. Nanocrystalline nature of the sample is confirmed through transmission electron microscopy. Ac electrical properties are investigated and the activation energy for cross-over frequency is less than that of conduction as evident from Almond and West formalism. The conductivity and modulus formalisms provide nearly the same activation energies for electrical relaxation of mobile ions. The frequency dependent plots of M″ and Z″ show that the electrical relaxation is non-Debye in nature. The scaling behavior of M″ and Z″ formalisms confirmed the temperature independent nature of relaxation mechanism.

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► Li2NiZrO4 is synthesized in phase pure nanocrystalline form.
► Oxidant to citric acid ratio is fixed at unity and pH of solution is maintained.
► Electrical relaxation studies are investigated using impedance spectroscopy.
► The scaling behavior of M″ and Z″ formalisms are investigated.