Defect Chemistry: Composition, Transport, and Reactions in the Solid State; Part II: Kinetics

Abstract

AbstractWithin the last few decades—though with its beginnings traceable to as early as 60 years ago—a direction of research has developed almost unnoticed by the classical chemical disciplines, such that one can now recognize a chemistry within the solid state that is analogous to the long‐familiar chemistry in the liquid state. It arises from those departures from the ideal structure that are thermodynamically unavoidable, the point defects, and is referred to as defect chemistry. It includes the description of ionic and electronic effects, and it considers diffusion as a special step of the overall reaction. This area of chemistry enables one to describe and treat in a unified way many apparently widely different phenomena such as ionic conduction in crystals, doping effects and p–n junctions in semiconductors, color centers in alkali metal halides, image development in photography, passivation and corrosion of metals, the kinetics of the synthesis and sintering of solid materials, the problems of rock formation during the earth's evolution, the mechanisms of gas sensors and high temperature fuel cells, the performance of photosentive electrodes, variations of the electron balance in high temperature superconductors, elementary processes of heterogeneous catalysis, nonequilibrium transitions and oscillations in semiconductors in electric fields, and many more. In such phenomena the equilibrium concentration of defects has an important double role: it not only determines the disorder and the departures from the stoichiometric composition in the equilibrium state, but also, together with the mobility as the kinetic parameter, is the key parameter concerning the rates of physical processes, which are the main subject of the present discussion. Following the account of the thermodynamic fundamentals in Part I, this second part of the review will be concerned with kinetic processes. These are essentially the equilibration processes (physical diffusion, electrical conduction, chemical diffusion, and reactions) that take place under the influence of chemical and electric driving forces. As in Part I, here again the general characteristics of defect chemistry will clearly emerge, including the coexistence of ionic and electronic charge carriers, and the importance of the spatial coordinates. The concluding section will discuss some special characteristics of nonlinear processes that are too often overlooked in solid‐state studies.