Browsing by Author "Gutmann, MJ"

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    A (3 + 3)-dimensional “hypercubic” oxide-ionic conductor: type ii bi2o3–nb2o5
    (ACS Publications, 2013-04-09) Ling, CD; Schmid, S; Blanchard, PER; Petříček, V; McIntyre, GJ; Sharma, N; Maljuk, A; Yaremchenko, AA; Kharton, VV; Gutmann, MJ; Withers, RL
    The high-temperature cubic form of bismuth oxide, δ-Bi2O3, is the best intermediate-temperature oxide-ionic conductor known. The most elegant way of stabilizing δ-Bi2O3 to room temperature, while preserving a large part of its conductivity, is by doping with higher valent transition metals to create wide solid-solutions fields with exceedingly rare and complex (3 + 3)-dimensional incommensurately modulated ?hypercubic? structures. These materials remain poorly understood because no such structure has ever been quantitatively solved and refined, due to both the complexity of the problem and a lack of adequate experimental data. We have addressed this by growing a large (centimeter scale) crystal using a novel refluxing floating-zone method, collecting high-quality single-crystal neutron diffraction data, and treating its structure together with X-ray diffraction data within the superspace symmetry formalism. The structure can be understood as an ?inflated? pyrochlore, in which corner-connected NbO6 octahedral chains move smoothly apart to accommodate the solid solution. While some oxide vacancies are ordered into these chains, the rest are distributed throughout a continuous three-dimensional network of wide δ-Bi2O3-like channels, explaining the high oxide-ionic conductivity compared to commensurately modulated phases in the same pseudobinary system. © 2013, American Chemical Society.
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    A combined single crystal neutron/x-ray diffraction and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance study of the hybrid perovskites CH3NH3PbX3 (X = I, Br and Cl)
    (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015-03-31) Baikie, T; Barrow, NS; Fang, Y; Keenan, PJ; Slater, PR; Piltz, RO; Gutmann, MJ; Mhaisalkara, SG; White, TJ
    The 1H and 13C NMR spectra in methylammonium lead halide perovskites, CH3NH3PbX3 (X = I, Br and Cl) show that the CH3NH3+ units undergo dynamic reorientation, as the organic component tumbles in the perovskite cage. In addition, the differences in the anomalously long relaxation times of the protons associated with the CH3 and not the NH3 groups indicate that only the amine end of the CH3NH3+ group is interacting with the inorganic network. Using this information, we have refined some single crystal X-ray and neutron diffraction data to probe their unusual structures in more detail. Furthermore, impedance spectroscopy has been used to monitor the high-temperature phase transition of CH3NH3PbI3, which confirms a significant increase in conductivity, when it is in its high temperature and higher symmetry structural regime. The optical band-gaps of each halide perovskite were determined using UV-visible spectroscopy and are consistent with previous reports. © Royal Society of Chemistry
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    Investigating short-range order in triglycine sulphate using x-ray and neutron diffuse scattering
    (Australian Institute of Physics, 2012-02-02) Hudspeth, JM; Goossens, DJ; Gutmann, MJ; Studer, AJ; Welberry, TR
    Triglycine sulphate (TGS) [(NH2CH2COOH)3H2SO4] is a hydrogen-bonded ferroelectric with a phase transition temperature of 322K [1]. The phase transition is reversible and second order, order disorder type, making TGS of fundamental interest in the field of phase transitions [2]. Above the critical temperature, one of the glycine molecules is disordered across a mirror plane. Below the critical temperature, it chooses a side, breaking the symmetry. The ferroelectric state is obtained through the ordering of the glycine orientations on neighbouring sites, but the mechanism for the phase transition is not well understood. We have investigated the short-range order in TGS by collecting single crystal x-ray and neutron diffuse scattering data on hydrogenous and fully deuterated TGS respectively. Data was collected at temperatures from well below to well above TC. We have also developed a model for the short-range order using the program ZMC [3]. This has given us some new insight into the behavior of the disordered glycine in TGS. For example, above TC, the orientations of the disordered glycine appear to be correlated over short range rather than being completely random as suggested by the average structure.
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    A neutron diffraction study of the phase transition of fully deuterated triglycine sulphate (ND2CD2COOD)(3 center dot) D2SO4
    (Wiley-V CH Verlag GMBH., 2013-03-01) Hudspeth, JM; Goossens, DJ; Gutmann, MJ; Studer, AJ
    Using neutron single crystal and powder diffraction, the first thorough investigation of the structure of fully deuterated triglycine sulphate, (ND2CD2COOD)3.D2SO4 is presented, including its evolution with T, through its structural phase transition. This includes new precise structural parameters determined at several key temperatures above and below TC using single crystal diffraction, and for the first time a parametric study has been undertaken over a wide temperature range — from 4 to 500 K in 2 K steps. It was found that fully deuterated TGS shows a structure consistent with hydrogenous TGS and partially deuterated TGS. The evolution of several key hydrogen bond lengths suggests that weakening of the H-bond network with T is crucial in decoupling the polarising glycine molecules from the other glycines and allowing the long-range ferroelectric order to break down. A new parameterisation of the phase transition is demonstrated. Contrary to results of physical properties measurements, there is no evidence of a second low temperature phase transition in TGS – no low temperature anomalies were observed in the crystal structure. © 2013, Wiley-VCH Verlag.
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    Neutron diffuse scattering in deuterated para-terphenyl, C18D14
    (Institute of Physics, 2009-03-25) Goossens, DJ; Beasley, AG; Welberry, TR; Gutmann, MJ; Piltz, RO
    Neutron diffuse scattering is used to explore the short-range order (SRO) in deuterated para-terphenyl, C18D14. The crystal shows SRO because the central of the three phenyl groups of each molecule can twist positively or negatively and these twists are correlated over the local scale. The presence of incipient Bragg peaks at (1/2 1/2 0) at 200 K shows that these flips are negatively correlated along the a direction (nearest neighbour correlation coefficient of similar to-0.3) and b direction (nearest neighbour correlation coefficient of similar to-0.87) and appear essentially uncorrelated along c. Diffuse peak anisotropy indicates that the range of the correlations along b is found to be similar to 3 times that along a. These correlations persist, although weaker, at room temperature. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to impose a correlation structure on the population of central ring twists that was deduced from Bragg scattering. By then allowing displacive relaxation of the structure, the observed diffuse scattering was well reproduced. Modelling the displacive motions of molecules showed that the positions of nearest ab-plane neighbour molecules are strongly positively correlated, particularly for motions approximately parallel to a, while the displacive correlations are weaker between molecules stacked along c. The apparent contradiction that the displacements are most strongly correlated along a while the occupancies are most strongly correlated along b is explained in terms of the connectivity of molecular interactions. © 2009, Institute of Physics
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    Structures, phase transitions, hydration, and ionic conductivity of Ba4Nb2O9
    (American Chemical Society, 2009-08-25) Ling, CD; Avdeev, M; Kutteh, R; Kharton, VV; Yaremchenko, AA; Fialkova, S; Sharma, N; Macquart, RB; Hoelzel, M; Gutmann, MJ
    Ba4Nb2O9 is shown to have two basic polymorphs: a high-temperature γ phase, which represents an entirely new structure typed and a low-temperature (x phase, which has the rare Sr4Ru2O9 structure type. The phases are separated by a reconstructive phase transition at similar to 1370 K, the kinetics of which are sufficiently slow that the γ phase can easily be quenched to room temperature. Below similar to 950 K, both (α and γ phases absorb significant amounts of water. In the case of the γ phase, protons from absorbed water occupy ordered positions in the structure, giving rise to a stoichiometric phase γ-III-Ba4Nb2O9.1/3H(2)O at room temperature. γ-III-Ba4Nb2O9-1/3H(2)O partially dehydrates, at similar to 760 K to give another stoichiometric phase γ-II-Ba4Nb2O9.1/3H(2)O, which completely dehydrates at similar to 950 K to γ-I- Ba4Nb2O9. The hydrated γ phases exhibit faster protonic and oxide ionic transport than the hydrated (x phases because of the presence in the γ phases of 2D layers containing Nb5+ cations with unusually low oxygen coordination numbers (4 or 5) separated by discrete OH groups. Hydration appears to play an important role in stabilizing the γ phases at low temperatures, with the γ -> α transition oil reheating a quenched sample occurring at higher temperatures in humid atmospheres. © 2009, American Chemical Society