Dependence of the Electric Properties and the Positron Lifetimes on the Dopant Content in La-doped SrTiO3

The resistivity, the dielectric constant, and the positron lifetimes in La-doped SrTiO₃ have been measured for La content x of 0—10 at.%. It was found that with increasing x, the variations of the resistivity and the dielectric constant and the positron lifetime parameters are nonmonotonic. The positron experiments have shown that the La-doping induces mainly formation of Sr vacancies and variation of Sr vacancy configuration; the most probable configuration is the isolated Sr vacancies (V) as x < 0.5 at.%, the associated defects (La V) for 0.5 < x < 1 at.%, and the associated defects (2 La V) above x = 1 at.%. The results suggest that the variation of the resistivity can be regarded as variation of electron density, and the variation of the dielectric constant results mainly from variations of the space-charge polarizaion and Sr-vacancy concentration and configuration.