Abstract
Although ionic conductors have been thoroughly investigated, topological features of these materials' nanotextures have been surprisingly overlooked. Here, we report fabrication of a metal-oxide nanocomposite consisting of intertwined phases of platinum (Pt) metal and oxygen-ion conductive cerium oxide (CeO2), i.e., Pt#CeO2. Sectional TEM observations coupled with topological analysis demonstrated that Pt#CeO2 composites having different nanostructures can be classified with a topological measure that corresponds to the phase connectivity of CeO2, namely, the Betti number β0, and another that corresponds to holes of the Pt phase, namely, the Betti number β1. The samples' oxygen ionic conductivity Pt#CeO2 was measured at elevated temperatures in air by alternating current impedance spectroscopy. It was found that the nanostructure changed from a striped appearance to a maze-like appearance as the value of β1/β0 decreased. Both the activation energy E and the pre-exponential factor σ0 for the oxygen ionic conductivity were found to be independent of β1 and exhibited linear, negative correlations with β0. The topological connectivity of the ion-conductive CeO2 phase, which was quantified with the Betti number β0, was suitable as a descriptor to correlate the image data of nanostructures with their ionic transport properties.
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