Grain boundary blocking of ionic conductivity in nanocrystalline yttria-doped ceria thin films. (15th July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: An, Jihwan; Bae, Jiwoong; Hong, Soonwook; Koo, Bongjun; Kim, Young-Beom; Gür, Turgut M.; Prinz, Fritz B.
• Is Part Of: Scripta materialia. Volume 104(2015)
• Page Start: 45
• Page End: 48
• Publication Date: 2015-07-15
• Subjects: Yttria-doped ceria -- Grain boundaries -- Ionic conductors -- Nanocrystalline materials -- Solid oxide fuel cell; Materials -- Periodicals; Metallurgy -- Periodicals; Metalen; Legeringen; Materiaalkunde; Metals, metalworking and machinery industries; Metals; Electronic journals; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scriptamat.2015.03.020
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1359-6462

Abstract

Abstract : Nanocrystalline YDC thin films with grain-sizes ranging from 38 to 93-nm were prepared using pulsed laser deposition followed by thermal annealing. Ionic conductivity decreased up to four orders of magnitude as the grain size increased. Using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, we showed that the counter-intuitive reduction in conductivity with grain-size is likely due to dopant and impurity segregation near grain-boundaries. Spectroscopic evidence suggests that the blocking effect due to defect segregation is more dominant on ionic conductivity than the grain-sizes.