Research Article

Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology

Volume 6: 1–5
ª The Author(s) 2016
Studies on electrical properties DOI: 10.1177/1847980416667274
nax.sagepub.com
of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite

K Tamizh Selvi1, K Alamelumangai1, M Priya2, M Rathnakumari3,

P Suresh Kumar3, and Suresh Sagadevan4

Abstract
Magnesium Oxide/Praseodymium Oxide (MgO/Pr6O11) nanocomposite was prepared by sol–gel method. X-ray dif-
fraction analysis confirmed the cubic structure. The morphology was studied using high-resolution scanning electron
microscopy picture. The AC/DC conductivity and dielectric properties were investigated in the frequency range of 1–4
KHz and in the temperature range of 303–573 K. The results showed that the dielectric constant and the tangent loss
were frequency and temperature dependent. The AC/DC conductivity at different temperatures indicated that the
conductivity was thermally activated. The activation energy for AC/DC conductivity was calculated using Arrhenius plot.

Keywords
MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite, XRD, HR-SEM, EDAX, dielectric constant, dielectric loss and electrical conductivity

Date received: 17 April 2016; accepted: 18 July 2016

Topic: Nanocomposites
Topic Editor: Samuel Bernard
Associate Editor: Yu Xin Zhang

Introduction route has proved to be a viable technique involving hydro-

In recent years, nanocomposites have been the subject of
renewed attention, due to their enhanced physical, chemi-
cal and biological properties and a wide range of applica-
tions. It has been found that the properties of nanomaterial
differ from those of their individual atoms and mole-
cules or bulk matter. The added advantage of nano-
composite is that the unstable bulk material can be
rendered stable in the composite form. Ferrite–Magne-
sium Oxide (Fe–MgO), 1 Nickel–Titanium di-oxide
(Ni–TiO2),2 Aluminium–Aluminium Oxide (Al/Al2O3),3
Aluminium/Silicon carbide (Al/SiC)4 and Copper/Neobium
(Cu/Nb)5 are some of the nanocomposites that were used
in various automotive and general industrial applications,
such as aerospace, electronic and military,6 battery cath-
odes,7,8 microelectronics,9 non-linear optics,10 sensors11
and so on. Rare earth-doped metal oxides are potentially
attractive because such materials exhibit unique physical
and chemical properties used for various optical and elec-
tronic applications. In this work, we synthesized the MgO/
Pr6O11 nanocomposite through a sol–gel method. ‘Sol–gel’
lysis and polycondensation of a molecular precursor, such
as metal alkoxides, to yield hydroxides or oxides under
different conditions. Other advantages of sol–gel synthesis
are that the final products prepared are homogeneous and
products are relatively higher in purity.
In the present work, the AC conductivity, dielectric con-
stant and dielectric loss measurements have been performed
for MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposites. The temperature and
1
Department of Physics, Vel Tech High Tech Dr. Rangarajan Dr.
2
Sakunthala Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Physics, Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil
Nadu, India
3
Department of Physics, Velammal Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil
Nadu, India
4
Department of Physics, AMET University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Corresponding Author:
M Priya, Department of Physics, Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai
602105, Tamil Nadu, India.
Email: priyamurugasen15@gmail.com

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open-access-at-sage).
2 Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology
frequency dependence of the electrical conductivity and the
dielectric constant for MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite in the
frequency range of 1–4 KHz and in the temperature range
of 303–573 K have been investigated.
Experimental details
For the synthesis of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite, magnesium
acetate tetrahydrate (MgAc) and praseodymium acetate (PrAc)
are taken in the ratio 1:0.5 (1 MgAc:0.5 PrAc). Both precursors
were dissolved separately with 50 ml double distilled water.
The Pr acetate and Mg acetate solutions were mixed and stirred
well to get homogeneous solutions. Then, 0.5 M of acetic acid
was added dropwise to the aforementioned mixture and main-
tained under the temperature range of 50–60 C for 4 h. A gel
that formed was allowed to dry at room temperature. The white
powder product obtained was dried at a temperature of 90 C
for 6 h in a hot air oven. The dried powder sample is further
annealed at a temperature of 500 C for 2 h.
Results and discussions
Phase analysis
Figure 1 shows the X-ray diffraction pattern of MgO/Pr6O11
nanocomposites. From Figure 1, the samples that exhibit major
peaks at 28.6447 (111)*, 32.0867 (200)*, 47.36 (220)* and
56.08 (311)* are assigned to cubic Pr6O11 (Joint Committee on
Powder Diffraction Standards [JCPDS] 42-1121). The other
peaks at 43.274 (200) and 62.242 (220) are assigned to cubic
MgO (JCPDS 04-0829). The asterisk (*) marked in Figure 1
denotes the Pr6O11 phases. The crystallite size of the nanocom-
posite is calculated using the Scherrer formula:12,13
t ¼ K= cos (1)
where t is the crystallite size,  is the wavelength of copper
Ka radiation ( ¼ 1.54056 Å),  is the full width at half
maxima and  is the angle of diffraction. The crystallite size
was found to be 12.4 nm.
High-resolution scanning electron microscopy
and X-ray spectra analysis
The surface morphology of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite stud-
ied using high-resolution scanning electron microscopey (HR-
SEM) is shown in Figure 2(a) and (b). From the micrographs, it
can be seen that the nanocomposite is flake shaped with small
agglomeration. The energy dispersive X-ray spectra are shown
in Figure 2(c). The inset shows the measured atomic concen-
trations of the elements with respect to the dopant ratio. The
atomic percentage of Mg (36.14%) is more than Pr (9.73%).
Dielectric studies
The temperature dependence of dielectric constant (er)
and loss tangent (tan) of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite in
30
(111)*
Intensity (a.u.)
(200)*
20
(220)*
(311)*
(200)
(220)
10
20 30 40 50 60 70
2θ (°)
Figure 1. XRD pattern of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite. XRD:
X-ray diffraction; The asterisk (*) marked is to denotes the
Pr6O11 phases. It distinguishes MgO peak and Pr6O11 peaks.
the temperature range of 303–573 K for four selected
frequencies (1 KHz, 2 KHz, 3 KHz and 4 KHz) is shown
in Figures 3 and 4. The relative dielectric constant (er) of
the samples can be obtained using the following formula:
e r ¼ Cd=e 0 S (2)
where C, d, e0 and S are the measured capacitance, the thick-
ness of the sample, the dielectric constant in vacuum (e0 ¼
8.854  1012 F/m) and the area of the sample, respectively.
The dielectric constant decreases significantly with an
increase in the frequency. This phenomenon can be attributed
to the decreasing dipole polarization at higher frequencies.
From Figure 3, it can be concluded that the dielectric constant
increases with the increasing temperature. This is because the
orientation polarization is related to thermal motion of the
molecules and dipoles are hard to orient spontaneously at low
temperature. Therefore, as the temperature increases, the
orientation of dipoles becomes easier and thus the orientation
polarization increases; this consequently increases the dielec-
tric constant. At low temperature, high relaxation time exists
and hence a low dielectric constant has been observed. At
higher temperature, the thermal energy provided to the sam-
ple increases. Hence, the dielectric constant increases. The
peak dielectric constant is higher for the sample at 573 K and
is 112,251 at 1 KHz with a loss tangent of about 17.8. The
tangent loss also decreases with the increasing frequency. The
dielectric loss is rather high at low frequency but falls quickly
with the rising frequency. Similar to the dependence of dielec-
tric constant on temperature, the dielectric loss increases with
the increase temperature. This indicates the thermally acti-
vated nature of the dielectric relaxation of the system. This
type of thermally activated dielectric materials is useful for
Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) tech-
nology such as gate dielectrics, transistors and so on.
Selvi et al. 3

Figure 2. (a) and (b) HR-SEM pictures of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite. (c) Energy Dispersive Analysis of X-rays (EDAX) spectra of
MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite. HR-SEM: high-resolution scanning electron microscopy.

120,000 1 KHz –3.0 303 K

2 KHz 323 K
100,000 3 KHz 373 K
4 KHz –3.5 423 K
80,000 473 K

logσ AC(Ωm)–1 –4.0

60,000
r

–4.5
40,000

20,000 –5.0

0 –5.5

300 350 400 450 500 550 600 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7
Temperature (K) Log f (Hz)

Figure 3. Variation of dielectric constant with temperature. Figure 5. Variation of AC conductivity with log f.

(AC) of the dielectric material can be calculated using the

18 1 KHz following equation:14
2 KHz
16
3 KHz
14 4 KHz
 AC ¼ oe r e 0 tan (3)
12
Tangent loss

where o (¼2pf) is the angular frequency and f is the applied

10
frequency. It is clear from the figure that AC increases
8 with the increasing frequency in the temperature range of
6 303–373 K. At higher temperature, a higher AC conductivity
4 value has been observed but it decreases with increasing fre-
2
quency. This is due to the short range translational hopping of
charge carriers between the localized states. Figure 6 shows
0
the AC conductivity log (AC) as a function of the reciprocal
–2 temperature (1000/T) in the investigated temperature range at
300 350 400 450 500 550 600 different frequencies for the MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposites.
Temperature (K) From the figure, it is seen that AC increases linearly with the
increasing temperature. This may indicate that the AC con-
Figure 4. Variation of tangent loss with temperature. ductivity is a thermally activated process, and it can be ana-
lysed according to the well-known Arrhenius equation:15
Figure 5 shows the dependence of AC conductivity,
AC, on frequency (1–4 KHz) at different temperatures in
the range of 303–473 K. The AC electrical conductivity  ¼ 0 exp ðE AC =k TÞ (4)
4 Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology

1 KHz –3.4
–1 1 KHz
2 KHz 2 KHz
3 KHz –3.6
3 KHz
–2 4 KHz
4 KHz
–3.8

logσ DC(Ωm)–1
logσ AC(Ωm)–1

–4.0
–3
–4.2
–4
–4.4

–4.6
–5
–4.8
–6
1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4
1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4
1000/T (K–1)
1000/T (K–1)

Figure 8. Variation of DC conductivity with temperature.

Figure 6. Variation of AC conductivity with temperature.

and it increases linearly with increase of operating fre-

–3.9
quency. The temperature dependence of the DC electrical
conductivity of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite is shown in
–4.0 Figure 8. The DC activation energy (EDC) is calculated from
–4.1 the Arrhenius equation (using equation (4)).15 The value of
303 K EDC was found to be 0.2139, 0.1999, 0.1913 and 0.1849 eV
logσ DC(Ωm)–1

–4.2
–4.3
–4.4
–4.5
–4.6
–4.7
–4.8
3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3
Log f (Hz)
Figure 7. Variation of DC conductivity with log f.
where 0 is the constant, EAC is the activation energy for
conduction, T is the absolute temperature, k is the Boltz-
mann’s constant and 0 is the pre-exponential factor
including the charge carrier mobility and density of states.
The obtained values of the AC activation energy (EAC) for
frequencies 1 KHz, 2 KHz, 3 KHz and 4 KHz are 0.2284,
0.2279, 0.2266 and 0.2253 eV, respectively.
Figure 7 shows the variation of DC conductivity (DC)
with frequency of range 303–473 K. The DC conductivity
(DC) of MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite at various tempera-
tures is calculated using the following relation:16
 ¼ L=RS
where L is the sample thickness, R is the resistance and S is
the electrode area on the sample surface. From Figure 7, it is
observed that the DC conductivity of the sample remains low
323 K
for 1 KHz, 2 KHz, 3 KHz and 4 KHz, respectively.
373 K
423 K
473 K
Conclusion
Nanocrystalline MgO/Pr6O11 composite is prepared by a sim-
ple sol–gel method. X-ray analysis confirmed the cubic struc-
ture. Electrical parameters such as dielectric constant, tangent
loss, AC/DC conductivity as a function of frequency range 1
3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 KHz–4 KHz and temperature range of 303–473 K were stud-
ied through impedance spectra. The frequency-dependent
AC and DC conductivity at different temperatures indicated
that the conductivity process was thermally activated. The
temperature dependence of AC and DC conductivity showed
a linear increase with increasing temperature. The calculated
activation energy was found to decrease with the increasing
frequency for AC and DC conductivity. The dielectric con-
stant and the tangent loss were found to decrease with the
increasing frequency and increase with the increasing tem-
perature. This high dielectric MgO/Pr6O11 nanocomposite is
potentially useful for microelectronic devices.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their thanks to Sophisticated Analy-
tical Instrumnent facility (SAIF), IIT Madras, India, for providing
the facilities of HR-SEM and Energy Dispersive Analysis of
X-rays (EDAX).
(5)
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Selvi et al.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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