Characterization of ZnO-ceramics by depolarization thermo-currents

The results obtained in this work show that the thermo-current spectra obtained are sensitive to the types of additives oxide present in the standard sample. In addition the results obtained for sample containing only the additives oxide and no zinc oxide exhibit the same phenomenon observed /4/ with zinc oxide varistors. The evolution of the high temperature peak was there attributed to a migration of bismuth ions. We have here shown that the TSC technique is sensitive to the type of additives oxide present in the material. In future work it is therefore planned to correlate the degradation of the material with the presence of bismuth oxide or other additives oxide by the TSC technique.