Morphological and electrical properties of zirconium vanadate doped with cesium

Cesium doped zirconium vanadate ZrV2O7 with different Cs dopant content (Cs/Zr varied from 0 to 0.5 in weight ratio) were fabricated by hydrothermal technique at 120 °C for 60 min. The synthesized materials are thermally treated using microwave technique. The structural and morphological properties of the synthesized materials and thermally treated samples were investigated using XRD and SEM respectively. It was evident that all synthesized specimens have cubic phase structural without any extra phase but after heat treatment Orthorhombic phase appear with doped samples. However, the morphological structure of the doped synthesized materials has transferred from nanoparticles into rods aspect with heat treatment for the different dopant ratio. Moreover, the electrical properties of both the synthesized and thermally treated materials are studied by AC impedance measurements. The results indicated that the ionic conductivity of Cs-doped ZrV2O7 materials decreased by increasing the dopant ratio while that thermally treated samples the ionic conductivity increase by increasing the dopant ratio. Finally, the concentration of cesium dopants is found to play crucial role in tuning the morphology and electrical properties of nanostructures.