Complex Electrical Conductivity of Biotite and Muscovite Micas at Elevated Temperatures: A Comparative Study

The unique physicochemical, electrical, mechanical, and thermal properties of micas make them suitable for a wide range of industrial applications, and thus, the interest for these kind of hydrous aluminosilicate minerals is still persistent, not only from a practical but also from a scientific point of view. In the present work, complex impedance spectroscopy measurements were carried out in muscovite and biotite micas, perpendicular to their cleavage planes, over a broad range of frequencies (10^-2 Hz to 10⁶ Hz) and temperatures (473-1173 K) that have not been measured so far. Different formalisms of data representation were used, namely, Cole-Cole plots of complex impedance, complex electrical conductivity and electric modulus to analyze the electrical behavior of micas and the electrical signatures of the dehydration/dehydroxylation processes. Our results suggest that ac-conductivity is affected by the structural hydroxyls and the different concentrations of transition metals (Fe, Ti and Mg) in biotite and muscovite micas. The estimated activation energies, i.e., 0.33-0.83 eV for biotite and 0.69-1.92 eV for muscovite, were attributed to proton and small polaron conduction, due to the bound water and different oxidation states of Fe.