Conductivity and Structure of Superionic Composite (AgI)0.6(NaPO3)0.4

Superionic conductors are of considerable interest from both application and fundamental points of view. Superionic solid electrolytes can be used for batteries, fuel cells and sensors. We have used melt quenching to make a new superionic composite (AgI)0.6(NaPO3)0.4 which exhibits an ionic conductivity of about 2 x 10-4 S/cm at ambient temperature. The conductivity of crystalline AgI and NaPO3 glass are lower of orders of magnitude. (AgI)0.6(NaPO3)0.4 is a composite material containing both crystalline and glass phases. The paper presents the conductivity as a function of temperature measured by impedance spectroscopy and the crystal structure performed by a high resolution powder diffractometer, VEGA at the Neutron Science Laboratory (KENS), KEK, Japan

Convertible source system of thermal neutron and X-ray at Hokkaido University electron linac facility

The convertible source system for the neutron and the X-ray imagings was installed in the 45MeV electron linear accelerator facility at Hokkaido University. The source system is very useful for a complementary imaging. The imaging measurements for a sample were performed with both beams by using a vacuum tube type image intensifier. The enhanced contrast was obtained from the dataset of the radiograms measured with the neutron and X-ray beams

Thermal Transport Imaging in the Quantum Hall Edge Channel

Research focused on heat transport in the quantum Hall (QH) edge channel has successfully addressed fundamental theoretical questions surrounding the QH physics. However, the picture of the edge channel is complicated by the phenomenon of energy dissipation out of the edge, and theories treating this dissipation are lacking. More experimental data is also needed to determine the coupling mechanism by which energy leaves the edge channel. We developed a method to map the heat transport in the QH edge to study the dissipation of heat. We locally heated the QH edge and locally detected the temperature increase while continuously varying the distance between heater and thermometer. We thereby obtained the thermal decay length of the edge state, which we found to depend on magnetic field strength

Conductivity and Structure of Superionic Composite (AgI)0.6(NaPO3)0.4

Superionic conductors are of considerable interest from both application and fundamental points of view. Superionic solid electrolytes can be used for batteries, fuel cells and sensors. We have used melt quenching to make a new superionic composite (AgI)0.6(NaPO3)0.4 which exhibits an ionic conductivity of about 2 x 10-4 S/cm at ambient temperature. The conductivity of crystalline AgI and NaPO3 glass are lower of orders of magnitude. (AgI)0.6(NaPO3)0.4 is a composite material containing both crystalline and glass phases. The paper presents the conductivity as a function of temperature measured by impedance spectroscopy and the crystal structure performed by a high resolution powder diffractometer, VEGA at the Neutron Science Laboratory (KENS), KEK, Japan

Stoichiometrically driven disorder and local diffusion in NMC cathodes

Major structural differences in lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides (NMC) prepared under identical conditions have been uncovered using neutron powder diffraction. Sample NMC-622 was obtained as a single R[3 with combining macron]m crystal structure with little defects, whereas NMC-811 showed significant Li deficiency and NMC-433 formed three distinct phases; ordered R[3 with combining macron]m, disordered R[3 with combining macron]m and a C2/m phase. Local diffusion behaviour was also studied by muon spin relaxation (μSR). It was observed that single phase R[3 with combining macron]m NMC-622 showed a higher lithium diffusion coefficient (4.4 × 10−11 cm2 s−1) compared to lithium deficient NMC-811 (2.9 × 10−11 cm2 s−1), or the highly disordered NMC-433 (3.4 × 10−11 cm2 s−1). Furthermore, activation energies for the Li diffusion process were estimated to be 58 meV, 61 meV and 28 meV for NMC-811, NMC-622 and NMC-433, respectively

Multiple diffusion pathways in LixNi0.77Co0.14Al0.09O2 (NCA) Li-ion battery cathodes

Experimental evidence for the presence of two computationally theorised diffusion pathways, namely the oxygen dumbbell hop (ODH) and tetrahedral site hop (TSH), has been given for the first time by muon spin relaxation (µSR) on sub-stoichiometric LixNi0.77Co0.14Al0.09O2. µSR has proven to be a powerful tool that is able to discriminate between diffusion pathways that occur on different timescales on a local level, where bulk electrochemical techniques cannot. Whereas the estimated values of DLi at lithium concentrations of 0.87 and 0.71 were found to be on the order of 10-11 by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, contributions to diffusion from ODH and TSH were determined to be on the order of 10-11 and 10-10 cm2 s-1, and a factor of four decrease in Ea for both samples, in excellent agreement with theoretical calculations on related compounds. Rietveld refinement of both X-ray and neutron diffraction data was also used to interrogate the local structure of the materials where no contribution from Li+/Ni2+ cation mixing was observed

A Mechanism of 13% Lattice Expansion in C_<60> FCC(110) Thin Films Grown on the GaAs(001) As-rich Surface

We perform a classical molecular dynamics simulation, a first-principle calculation based on LDA, and moreover a simple theoretical analysis to examine the very interesting crystalographic structure of the first layer and overlayer C_s adsorbed on the As-rich substrate of the GaAs(001) surface, which was recently observed with the STM by our group. From the classical molecular dynamics study, we reproduce the pairwise structure of C_ adsorbed in the first layer. On the other hand, from the first-principle study, we estimate how much the charge transfer is from the underlayer As atoms to the C_s adsorbed in the first layer. We found that the amount of this charge transfer is large enough to expect that the strong dipole field caused by this dipole layer at the interface induces dipole moments in the C_s adsorbed on overlayers and that the resulting dipole-dipole interaction among the overlayer C_ molecules is the origin of the 13% lattice expansion of the overlayer C_ fcc thin film observed experimentally