%0 Journal Article %T Electrical properties of SnO2 ceramic varistors withstanding high current pulses %A Glot %A A. B. %A Lu %A Z. Y. %A Zhou %A Z. Y. %A Ivon %A A. I. %J Superficies y vac¨ªo %D 2011 %I Sociedad Mexicana de Ciencia y Tecnologia de Superficies y Materiales %X electrical properties of new dense sno2-coo-nb2o5-cr2o3-y2o3 varistor ceramics are studied. current-voltage characteristics in the wide range from 10-11 to about 3.3¡¤103 a¡¤cm-2 contain three regions. at low currents linear (ohmic) region is found. highly nonlinear region with the nonlinearity coefficient of about 50 at 1 ma¡¤cm-2 is observed between 10-6 and 1 a¡¤cm-2. at higher currents the upturn region is revealed. in this region the slope of current-voltage characteristic in the double logarithmic scale is decreased. the increase in dc current on time at fixed voltage and the hysteresis in the ac current-voltage characteristic are observed. these features can be related to joule heating or electronic processes. however, after the high-current pulses only minor changes at low current are found. this indicates that studied ceramics withstand high-current overloads. this fact can be attributed to the formation of quite identical electrically-active grain boundaries throughout a sample. the grain resistivities estimated from high-current pulse data are the lowest known up to now for sno2 varistors. %K grain boundary %K non-ohmic conduction %K potential barrier %K pulse stability %K tin dioxide %K varistor. %U http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1665-35212011000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en