Thermodynamics of solid electrolytes and related oxide ceramics based on the fluorite structure

Abstract

Oxides based on the fluorite structure are important as electrolytes in solid oxide fuel cells, thermal barrier coatings, gate dielectrics, catalysts, and nuclear materials. Though the parent fluorite structure is simple, the substitution of trivalent for tetravalent cations, coupled with the presence of charge-balancing oxygen vacancies, leads to a wealth of short-range and long-range ordered structures and complex thermodynamic properties. The location of vacancies and the nature of clusters affect the energetics of mixing in rare earth doped zirconia, hafnia, ceria, urania, and thoria, with systematic trends in energetics as a function of cation radius. High temperature oxide melt solution calorimetry has provided direct measurement of formation enthalpies of these refractory materials. Surface and interfacial energies have also been measured in yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) nanomaterials. Other ionic conductors having perovskite, apatite, and mellilite structures are discussed briefly.