Speaker
Description
Solid oxide ion conductors are a remarkable class of compounds with many technological applications including fuel cell electrolytes, membranes, and oxygen sensors. Knowledge of the conduction pathways in these materials is crucial for development of new conductors with improved properties. Quasi-elastic neutron scattering experiments provide a unique opportunity to observe oxygen dynamics on the microscopic scale and, when combined with ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, can lead to atomic-level insight into the diffusion processes in complex conductors. We demonstrate this on two excellent oxide ion conductors: La2Mo2O9 and Bi0.913V0.087O1.587. In both cases we were able to elucidate intricate, temperature-dependent migration pathways that had not been previously identified and link them to specific structural motifs in each compound. Extracting this level of information relies on the combined use of experimental and computational studies and is difficult to replicate using the more conventional experimental methods alone.
