A new method for investigating the conduction of ZnO-based varistor ceramics

The I-V characteristics of ZnO-Bi₂O₃, ZnO-Bi₂O₃-MnO systems and commercial ZnO varistor ceramics were measured at temperatures in a wide range of -180°C< T <100°C. It was found that experimental conductance-temperature curves under various currents can be theoretically reproduced by calculating conductance in parallel or series for mechanisms such as scattering mechanism, thermionic emission and tunneling effect. It was found that if the relation between a single-mechanism conductance and temperature obeys the exponential law with an exponent a little less than 1, then this mechanism will give rise to a high nonlinear exponent. The nonlinear exponent due to tunneling effect was 33, which was similar to the measured value of 43 for commercial ZnO varistor ceramics. This tunneling effect is active even at low electric field, especially in low temperature region.