The study of Tl2O3 addition on microstructure and electrical properties of high-voltage SnO2 varistors

In this research, the effects of various molar amounts of Tl2O3 addition (x= 0, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, and 1.0) on microstructure and electrical properties of high-voltage SnO2 varistors were investigated. According to XRD and FE-SEM results, the presence of Tl2O3 was detected as secondary phase in samples which their x values are higher than 0.25. By Tl2O3 addition from 0 to 1%, the grain size decreased from 4 µm to 2.3 µm which it is resulted from a grain growth suppression induced by secondary phase based on Zener mechanism. The best non-Ohmic properties with the nonlinear coefficient of 15.1 and the leakage current density of 95 µA/cm2 were observed in samples doped with 0.5% Tl2O3. Furthermore, the breakdown electric field of this sample was 532 V/mm. Further addition of Tl2O3 had no considerable effect on nonlinearity of samples, but it increased the breakdown electric field of samples through the reduction in grain size.