Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (BST) ceramics with 0.5 mol% various trivalent rare-earth additions prepared by a solid-state route are investigated. A strong correlation is observed between the microstructure, dielectric properties and rare-earth element dopant. The results display that comparing with the lattice constants of undoped and doped rare-earth BST, the structure transforms from cubic to tetragonal structure. In addition, the dopant improves the tetragonal distortion with the ionic radius of rare earth decreasing, and then deteriorates it with further decreasing. Large ions rare-earth additions effectively suppress the grain growth of BST. It is found that the temperature-permittivity characteristics for the BSTR (R, namely, rare earth) system could be controlled using various rare-earth elements. Especially, such as Sm, Eu, Gd dopants are effective to satisfy the tunable microwave devices application due to the decrease of permittivity and the improvement of dissipation factors of BST ceramic with the accompanying high-tunability. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.