Control of the Electrical Properties in Spinel Oxides by Manipulating the Cation Disorder. (29th October 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ndione, Paul F.; Shi, Yezhou; Stevanovic, Vladan; Lany, Stephan; Zakutayev, Andriy; Parilla, Philip A.; Perkins, John D.; Berry, Joseph J.; Ginley, David S.; Toney, Michael F.
• Is Part Of: Advanced functional materials. Volume 24:Number 5(2014)
• Page Start: 610
• Page End: 618
• Publication Date: 2013-10-29
• Subjects: Materials -- Periodicals; Chemical vapor deposition -- Periodicals; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201302535
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1616-301X

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" xml:lang="en"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>In this work, the impact of cation disorder on the electrical properties of biaxially textured Co₂ZnO₄ and Co₂NiO₄ thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition are investigated using a combination of experiment and theory. Resonant elastic X‐ray diffraction along with conductivity measurements both before and after post‐deposition annealing show that Co₂ZnO₄ and Co₂NiO₄ exhibit opposite changes of the conductivity with cation disorder, which can be traced back to their different ground‐state atomic structures, being normal and inverse spinel, respectively. Electronic structure calculations identify a self‐doping mechanism as the origin of conductivity. A novel thermodynamic model describes the non‐equilibrium cation disorder in terms of an effective temperature. This work offers a way of controlling the conductivity in spinels in a quantitative manner by controlling the cation disorder and a new design principle whereby non‐equilibrium growth can be used to create beneficial disorder.</p> </abstract>