Combined experimental and computational study of oxide ion conduction dynamics in Sr2Fe2O5 brownmillerite
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Date
2013-08-13
Journal Title
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Publisher
American Chemical Society
Abstract
We report a detailed study of the dynamics of oxide ionic conduction in brownmillerite-type Sr2Fe2O5, including lattice anisotropy, based on neutron scattering studies of a large (partially twinned) single crystal in combination with ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Single-crystal diffraction reveals supercell peaks due to long-range ordering among chains of corner-sharing FeO4 tetrahedra, which disappears on heating above 540 °C due to confined local rotations of tetrahedra. Our simulations show that these rotations are essentially isotropic, but are a precondition for the anisotropic motion that moves oxide ions into the tetrahedral layers from the octahedral layers, which we observe experimentally as a Lorentzian broadening of the quasielastic neutron scattering spectrum. This continual but incoherent movement of oxide ions in turn creates conduction pathways and activates long-range diffusion at the interface between layers, which appears to be largely isotropic in two dimensions, in contrast with previously proposed mechanisms that suggest diffusion occurs preferentially along the c axis.© 2013, American Chemical Society.
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Keywords
Oxides, Ionic conductivity, Scattering, Simulation, Crystals, Ions
Citation
Auckett, J.E., Studer, A.J., Pellegrini, E., Ollivier, J., Johnson, M.R., Schober, H., Miiller, W., & Ling, C.D. (2013). Combined experimental and computational study of oxide ion conduction dynamics in Sr2Fe2O5 brownmillerite. Chemistry of Materials, 25(15), 3080-3087. doi:10.1021/cm401278m