New insight into the properties of proton conducting oxides from neutron total scattering
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- U PAVIA, ITALY
In recent years there has been a growing interest in searching for new proton conducting materials that could be successfully used in medium temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). In particular, proton conducting oxides have been the subject of a massive research activity. Among the most promising oxide the acceptor doped cerates appears to be those most appealing in view of practical applications. A relevant aspect of these materials is the investigation of the local distortion of the structure arising from water incorporation. This kind of study is of great help in defining how the structure changes in order to accommodate the proton which is usually thought to enter the structure in form of hydroxyl group where the oxygen vacancy results from the acceptor doping on the Ce site. Atomistic simulation work confirmed that the preferential location of dopant ions is on the Ce site. To the best of our knowledge the only experimental work addressing the role of dopant and water incorporation on the local structure of V-doped cerates is a X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) work carried out by Longo and coworkers at the Y K-edge. The main conclusion of that work was the observation that Y-doping induces a distortion of the parent BaCe0{sub 3} structure resulting in a significantly distorted Y local environment. However, local structure information derived from XAS study does not provide a direct structural information and depends strongly upon the model used to calcualte theoretical {chi}(k) which is not unique. Moreover, the XAS analysis usually provide significant information only up to the second shell. As a consequence, a more reliable and useful technique to investigate the local arrangement in these proton conducting oxides appears to be the Pair Distribution Function (PDF) analysis derived from total neutron scattering measurements. In the present work we investigated the pure BaCeO{sub 3} and the acceptor doped BaCe{sub 0.90}Y{sub 0.10}O{sub 2.85} compounds. In both cases the samples have been measured at room temperature and after being exposed to dry and wet air (humidification attained through bubbling air in D{sub 2}O). Aim of this work is to look at the effect of Y-doping and water doping on the local structure of the above mentioned samples.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 960595
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-08-05426; LA-UR-08-5426; CPCHFT; TRN: US201006%%1236
- Journal Information:
- ChemPhysChem, Vol. 9, Issue 16; ISSN 1439-4235
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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