Invited Presentation: Effect of Elastic Strain and Dislocations on Oxide Ion Diffusion and Oxygen Exchange Kinetics on Oxides

How can the oxygen non-stoichiometry, oxygen diffusion and oxygen reduction kinetics be altered in functional oxides by lattice strain? This question has recently attracted wide interest for enabling a new route for attaining fast oxygen exchange and transport kinetics, and obtaining fundamental answers to this question is important for a range of technologies including high performance solid oxide fuel cells, oxide based sensors, separation membranes and memristors. By applying mechanical stress, the inherent energy landscape of the reactions involved on the material can be altered. For example, in theory one can turn an endothermic reaction into an exothermic one, and reduce the energy barriers by applying lattice strain. This is the so-called mechano-chemical coupling, and when applied on electrochemical systems we can introduce the term mechano-electro-chemistry.

In this talk, we will discuss recent work that probes quantitatively the mechanisms by which elastic strain impacts surface reactivity and diffusion kinetics in fluorite and perovskite oxides. Computationally, using ab initio and atomistic simulations, we discovered that lattice strain can accelerate the ionic transport in 8%Y₂O₃-ZrO₂ by reducing the ion migration energy barriers. Combining surface chemical characterization on model thin films with ab initio modeling, we demonstrated for the first time that tensile lattice strain favors oxygen exchange kinetics on both the oxygen-deficient (La,Sr)CoO_3-d and (La,Sr)MnO_3-d and the oxygen-excess Nd₂NiO_4+d by impacting the energies of oxygen adsorption and dissociation, oxygen vacancy formation, oxygen diffusion, cation segregation and the electron transfer process. The favorable impact of tensile lattice strain on these elementary reactions was validated at the collective level by quantifying the oxygen surface exchange and diffusion kinetics with isotope exchange measurements on (La,Sr)CoO_3-d. Lastly, we will discuss the impact of dislocations in ionic crystals, as doped CeO₂ and ZrO₂ on the distribution of charged defects and mobility of oxygen vacancies. These results together put forth both elastic strain and the dislocations to be important factors that impressively changes the kinetics of charge transport and reactivity in functional oxides.