Non-uniform electron conduction in weakly ordered SrFe1-xMoxO3-δ.

The electrical conductivity of SrFe1-xMoxO3-δ (0.07, 0.15, 0.25) was measured in the range of oxygen partial pressure of 10-16-0.5 atm and at temperatures 800-950 °C by a four-probe dc technique. Experimental results were satisfactorily simulated with a model suggesting that oxygen ions and electronic charge carriers of n- and p-types were involved in conduction. The mobility of charge carriers was calculated using partial conductivities and earlier published oxygen nonstoichiometry data. The mobility of p-type charge carriers was found to decrease in response to a decreasing oxygen content or an increasing molybdenum content in the oxide. The mobility of n-type carriers was found to be unaffected by the oxygen content, but exhibited an accelerating increase upon increasing the molybdenum content. Such behavior of the electron mobility was interpreted in view of the tendency of iron and molybdenum cations to undergo ordering based on the supposition that two different mechanisms of electron transport were involved in these oxides. It was assumed that nanoscale ordered areas with fast electron transport dispersed in the disordered perovskite matrix played the role of a high-conductivity filler in a composite consisting of two components with different conductivities. The behavior of the effective electron mobility was approximated well using the percolation theory. The molybdenum content x = 0.327 was calculated to be the percolation threshold in SrFe1-xMoxO3-δ.

The p(O2)-T stability domain of cubic perovskite Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-δ.

Cubic perovskite-type Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-δ (BSCF) is one of the mixed ionic-electronic conductors with the highest oxygen permeability known to date. It serves as a parent material for the development of functional derivatives for electrochemical applications including oxygen separation membranes, solid electrolyte cell electrodes and electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction. The present study is focused on the determination of the precise stability boundaries of cubic perovskite BSCF employing a coulometric titration technique in combination with thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray and neutron diffraction, and molecular dynamics simulations. Both the low-p(O2) and high-p(O2) stability boundaries at 700-950 °C were found to correspond to a fixed value of oxygen content in the perovskite lattice of 3 - δ = ∼2.13 and ∼2.515, respectively. The stability limits in this temperature range are expressed by the following equations: high-p(O2) boundary: log p(O2) (atm) (±0.1) = -10 150/T (K) + 8.055; low-p(O2) boundary: log p(O2) (atm) (±0.03) = -20 750/T (K) + 4.681. The p(O2)-T phase diagram of the BSCF system under oxidizing conditions is addressed in a wider temperature range and is shown to include a region of precipitation of a "low-temperature" phase occurring at 400-500 °C. The fraction of the low-temperature precipitate, which co-exists with the cubic perovskite phase and is stable up to 790-820 °C, increases upon increasing p(O2) in the range 0.21-1.0 atm.

Magnetization, Mössbauer and isothermal dilatometric behavior of oxidized YBa(Co,Fe)4O(7+δ).

Mössbauer spectroscopy and magnetization studies of YBaCo(4-x)Fe(x)O(7+δ) (x = 0-0.8) oxidized at 0.21 and 100 atm O(2), indicate an increasing role of penta-coordinated Co(3+) states when the oxygen content approaches 8-8.5 atoms per formula unit. Strong magnetic correlations are observed in YBaCo(4-x)Fe(x)O(8.5) from 2 K up to 55-70 K, whilst the average magnetic moment of Co(3+) is lower than that for δ ≤ 0.2, in correlation with the lower (57)Fe(3+) isomer shifts determined from Mössbauer spectra. The hypothesis on dominant five-fold coordination of cobalt cations was validated by molecular dynamics modeling of YBaCo(4)O(8.5). The iron solubility limit in YBaCo(4-x)Fe(x)O(7+δ) corresponds to approximately x ≈ 0.7. The oxygen intercalation processes in YBaCo(4)O(7+δ) at 470-700 K, analyzed by X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetry and controlled-atmosphere dilatometry, lead to unusual volume expansion opposing to the cobalt cation radius variations. This behavior is associated with increasing cobalt coordination numbers and with rising local distortions and disorder in the crystal lattice on oxidation, predicted by the computer simulations. When the oxygen partial pressure increases from 4 × 10(-5) to 1 atm, the linear strain in YBaCo(4)O(7+δ) ceramics at 598 K is as high as 0.33%.