Dielectric materials with GDR (e.g. CaCu3Ti4O12 – CCTO and isostructural systems, co-doped NiO etc) attract major research interest due to their bright prospective in energy storage and memory devices. However, after years of intensive experimental and theoretical studies of GDR materials, physical nature of their extremely high complex dielectric permittivity (specifically, real part ∼ 104 - 106) is still not established convincingly. Another serious problem is excessively high imaginary part of the permittivity (which usually exceeds real one). Better understanding on physical mechanisms and limitations of GDR behavior in aforementioned dielectrics could be achieved based on polaronic phase transition criteria, proposed S. Fratini and P. Quémerais [Eur. Phys. Journ. B14, 99 (2000)]. In particular, ‘melting’ of Polaronic Wigner Crystal (PWC) either to ‘polaronic liquid’ or ‘electron liquid’ manifests two different scenarios of PWC phase transition at increment of concentrations of appropriate dopants. The former scenario is certainly preferable for ionic dielectrics with GDR behavior, while the latter one would yield in metal-like dielectric response with very high real permittivity, but unacceptable loss. Described approach provides physically transparent guidelines for selection of prospective host dielectrics with GDR behavior and quantitative estimations on critical dopant/polaron concentrations, corresponding to both aforementioned types of the phase transitions as well as temperature ranges suitable for GDR.
