Effect of alkaline-earth ions on the dynamics of alkali ions in bismuthate glasses

The effect of alkaline earth ions on the dynamics of Li+ ions in bismuthate glasses has been studied in the temperature range 353-503 K and in the frequency range 10 Hz-2 MHz. The dc conductivity increases and activation energy decreases with the increase of a particular alkaline earth content for the glasses with a fixed alkali content. The increased modification of the network due to the increase in alkaline earth content in the compositions is responsible for the increasing conductivity. Also the compositions with smaller alkaline earth ions were found to exhibit higher conductivity. Although the conductivity increases with the decrease of ionic radii of alkaline earth ions, the activation energy shows a maximum for the Sr ion. The electric modulus and the conductivity formalisms have been employed to study the relaxation dynamics of charge carriers in these glasses. The alkali ions were observed to change their dynamics with the change of the alkaline earth ions. The same anomalous trend for activation energy for the conductivity relaxation frequency and the hopping frequency was also observed for glasses containing SrO. It was also observed that the mobile lithium ion concentrations are independent of nature of alkaline earth ions in these glasses.