Origin of high-temperature relaxor-like behavior in CaCu3Ti4O12

The relaxor-like behavior in CaCu3Ti4O12 was investigated in details. The dielectric anomaly was found to be an extrinsic phenomenon related to oxygen vacancy. Annealing treatments in N2 and O2 atmospheres revealed that the relaxor-like behavior is composed of two types of relaxations with close relaxation parameters. Impedance analysis showed that the relaxations appearing in the low- and high-temperature wings of the anomaly are related to the dipolar and Maxwell-Wagner (MW) relaxation, respectively. Both relaxations are induced by the hopping motions of confined carriers related to single-ionized oxygen vacancies, and they are intimately linked with each other. The relaxor-like anomaly is attributed to the combining effect of these two relaxations, i.e., the dipolar relaxation first creates a steplike increase followed by a rapid decrease in dielectric constant caused by the MW relaxation, thereby, giving rise to the relaxor-like behavior.