scholarly journals Pressure Induced Stability Enhancement of Cubic Nanostructured CeO2 †

Nanomaterials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 650
Author(s):  
Mariano Andrés Paulin ◽  
Gaston Garbarino ◽  
Ana Gabriela Leyva ◽  
Mohamed Mezouar ◽  
Joaquin Sacanell

Ceria (CeO2)-based materials are widely used in applications such as catalysis, fuel cells and oxygen sensors. Its cubic fluorite structure with a cell parameter similar to that of silicon makes it a candidate for implementation in electronic devices. This structure is stable in a wide temperature and pressure range, with a reported structural phase transition to an orthorhombic phase. In this work, we study the structure of CeO2 under hydrostatic pressures up to 110 GPa simultaneously for the nanometer- and micrometer-sized powders as well as for a single crystal, using He as the pressure-transmitting medium. The first-order transition is clearly present for the micrometer-sized and single-crystal samples, while, for the nanometer grain size powder, it is suppressed up to at least 110 GPa. We show that the stacking fault density increases by two orders of magnitude in the studied pressure range and could act as an internal constraint, avoiding the nucleation of the high-pressure phase.

Crystals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
Magali Allain ◽  
Cécile Mézière ◽  
Pascale Auban-Senzier ◽  
Narcis Avarvari

Tetramethyl-tetraselenafulvalene (TMTSF) and bis(ethylenedithio)-tetrathiafulvalene (BEDT-TTF) are flagship precursors in the field of molecular (super)conductors. The electrocrystallization of these donors in the presence of (n-Bu4N)TaF6 or mixtures of (n-Bu4N)TaF6 and (n-Bu4N)PF6 provided Bechgaard salts formulated as (TMTSF)2(TaF6)0.84(PF6)0.16, (TMTSF)2(TaF6)0.56(PF6)0.44, (TMTSF)2(TaF6)0.44(PF6)0.56 and (TMTSF)2(TaF6)0.12(PF6)0.88, together with the monoclinic and orthorhombic phases δm-(BEDT-TTF)2(TaF6)0.94(PF6)0.06 and δo-(BEDT-TTF)2(TaF6)0.43(PF6)0.57, respectively. The use of BEDT-TTF and a mixture of (n-Bu4N)TaF6/TaF5 afforded the 1:1 phase (BEDT-TTF)2(TaF6)2·CH2Cl2. The precise Ta/P ratio in the alloys has been determined by an accurate single crystal X-ray data analysis and was corroborated with solution 19F NMR measurements. In the previously unknown crystalline phase (BEDT-TTF)2(TaF6)2·CH2Cl2 the donors organize in dimers interacting laterally yet no organic-inorganic segregation is observed. Single crystal resistivity measurements on the TMTSF based materials show typical behavior of the Bechgaard phases with room temperature conductivity σ ≈ 100 S/cm and localization below 12 K indicative of a spin density wave transition. The orthorhombic phase δo-(BEDT-TTF)2(TaF6)0.43(PF6)0.57 is semiconducting with the room temperature conductivity estimated to be σ ≈ 0.16–0.5 S/cm while the compound (BEDT-TTF)2(TaF6)2·CH2Cl2 is also a semiconductor, yet with a much lower room temperature conductivity value of 0.001 to 0.0025 S/cm, in agreement with the +1 oxidation state and strong dimerization of the donors.


1999 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1014-1019
Author(s):  
Takashi Saito ◽  
Masaki Azuma ◽  
Mikio Takano ◽  
Zenji Hiroi ◽  
Yasuo Narumi ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Khai-Nghi Truong ◽  
Carina Merkens ◽  
Martin Meven ◽  
Björn Faßbänder ◽  
Richard Dronskowski ◽  
...  

Single-crystal neutron diffraction experiments at 100 and 2.5 K have been performed to determine the structure of 3-(pyridin-4-yl)pentane-2,4-dione (HacacPy) with respect to its protonation pattern and to monitor a low-temperature phase transition. Solid HacacPy exists as the enol tautomer with a short intramolecular hydrogen bond. At 100 K, its donor···acceptor distance is 2.450 (8) Å and the compound adopts space group C2/c, with the N and para-C atoms of the pyridyl ring and the central C of the acetylacetone substituent on the twofold crystallographic axis. As a consequence of the axial symmetry, the bridging hydrogen is disordered over two symmetrically equivalent positions, and the carbon–oxygen bond distances adopt intermediate values between single and double bonds. Upon cooling, a structural phase transition to the t 2 subgroup P\bar 1 occurs; the resulting twins show an ordered acetylacetone moiety. The phase transition is fully reversible but associated with an appreciable hysteresis in the large single crystal under study: transition to the low-temperature phase requires several hours at 2.5 K and heating to 80 K is required to revert the transformation. No significant hysteresis is observed in a powder sample, in agreement with the second-order nature of the phase transition.


Author(s):  
Mark D. Welch ◽  
Jens Najorka ◽  
Michael S. Rumsey ◽  
John Spratt

ABSTRACT Frustrated magnetic phases have been a perennial interest to theoreticians wishing to understand the energetics and behavior of quasi-chaotic systems at the quantum level. This behavior also has potentially wide applications to developing quantum data-storage devices. Several minerals are examples of such phases. Since the definition of herbertsmithite, Cu3ZnCl2(OH)6, as a new mineral in 2004 and the rapid realization of the significance of its structure as a frustrated antiferromagnetic phase with a triangular magnetic lattice, there has been intense study of its magnetic properties and those of synthetic compositional variants. In the past five years it has been recognized that the layered copper hydroxyhalides barlowite, Cu4BrF(OH)6, and claringbullite, Cu4FCl(OH)6, are also the parent structures of a family of kagome phases, as they also have triangular magnetic lattices. This paper concerns the structural behavior of claringbullite that is a precursor to the novel frustrated antiferromagnetic states that occur below 30 K in these minerals. The reversible hexagonal (P63/mmc) ↔ orthorhombic (Pnma or Cmcm) structural phase transition in barlowite at 200−270 K has been known for several years, but the details of the structural changes that occur through the transition have been largely unexplored, with the focus instead being on quantifying the low-temperature magnetic behavior of the orthorhombic phase. This paper reports the details of the structural phase transition in natural claringbullite at 100−293 K as studied by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The transition temperature has been determined to lie between 270 and 293 K. The progressive disordering of Cu at the unusual trigonal prismatic Cu(OH)6 site on heating is quantified through the phase transition for the first time, and a methodology for refining this disorder is presented. Key changes in the behavior of Cu(OH)4Cl2 octahedra in claringbullite have been identified that suggest why the Pnma structure is likely stabilized over an alternative Cmcm structure. It is proposed that the presence of a non-centrosymmetric octahedron in the Pnma structure allows more effective structural relaxation during the phase transition than can be achieved by the Cmcm structure, which has only centrosymmetric octahedra.


2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena C. Tarantino ◽  
Michele Zema ◽  
Athos M. Callegari ◽  
Massimo Boiocchi ◽  
Michael A. Carpenter

ABSTRACTA natural olivenite single crystal was submitted to in situ high-temperature single-crystal X-ray diffraction from room temperature (RT) to 500°C. Unit-cell parameters were measured at regular intervals of 25°C, and complete datasets collected at T = 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400 and 500°C. Evolution of unit-cell parameters and structure refinements indicates that olivenite undergoes a structural phase transition from P21/n to Pnnm at ~200°C, and eventually becomes isostructural with the other members of the olivenite-mineral group. Volume expansion with temperature is larger in the monoclinic phase – where it follows a non-linear trend – than in the orthorhombic one. Axial and volume expansion coefficients of the orthorhombic olivenite phase are positive and linear and similar to those of the other Cu-bearing member of the mineral family, namely libethenite, but rather different from those of the Zn-analogue arsenate adamite.Distortion of Cu polyhedra is quite high in the olivenite monoclinic phase at RT and goes towards a relative regularization with increasing T until the phase transition occurs. In the orthorhombic phase, no significant variation of the polyhedral distortion parameters is observed with increasing temperature, and maximum expansion is along the b direction and governed by corner-sharing. Landau potential provides a good representation of the macroscopic changes associated with the phase transition, coupling between the strains and the order parameter is responsible for the nearly tricritical character of the transition.


2022 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
В.Е. Аникеева ◽  
К.Н. Болдырев ◽  
О.И. Семенова ◽  
М.Н. Попова

The paper presents the transmission spectra of hybrid perovskite MAPbI3 single crystals near the fundamental absorption edge in a wide temperature range. The absorption coefficient α of the single crystal samples is estimated at a temperature T = 150 K for the light with a photon energy E = 1.6 eV and at T = 40 K for E = 1.8 eV. The obtained values turned out to be several orders of magnitude smaller than the values of α for thin-film samples known from the literature. A sharp shift of the fundamental absorption edge by ~ 100 meV was observed at a temperature T1 = 160 K of the structural phase transition from the tetragonal to the orthorhombic phase. The temperature hysteresis of the shift of the fundamental absorption edge near T1 was recorded, which is characteristic of a first-order phase transition.


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