Effect of Annealing on Electrical Degradation Characteristics of ZnO Varistors

The effects of the thermally annealing of Bi-Mn-Co-Sb2O3-added ZnO varistors on their electrical degradation were investigated. For the samples with 0.01mol% Sb2O3added and without Sb2O3, no marked difference in the non linearity index of the voltage-current (V-I) characteristics was observed upon electrical degradation for the annealed and nonannealed samples. Upon increasing the amount of Sb2O3 added, the values of  increased after electrical degradation for the annealed samples. Moreover, the value of  after electrical degradation was proportional to the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the X-ray diffraction peak for Zn2.33Sb0.67O4-type spinel particles under various annealing conditions. The added Sb2O3 did not dissolve in the ZnO grains but became segregated at grain boundaries. Therefore, it is speculated that the increase in the FWHM for the spinel particles is due to the increase in the numbers of fine spinel particles at grain boundaries and triple points.