Determination of Oxygen Nonstoichiometry and Diffusivity in Mixed Conducting Oxides by Oxygen Coulometric Titration. II Oxygen Nonstoichiometry and Defect Model for La0.8Sr0.2CoO3-delta

The oxygen nonstoichiometry of La0.8Sr0.2CoO3-delta has been determined as a function of oxygen partial pressure and temperature using a high-temperature coulometric titration cell. For each measured value of the oxygen chemical potential, the oxygen nonstoichiometry is found to be nearly independent of temperature. The equilibrium partial energy and entropy associated with oxygen incorporation have been determined as a function of oxygen nonstoichiometry and temperature. The results are interpreted in terms of a model in which it is assumed that conduction electrons, created during vacancy formation, gradually fill electron states in a wide electron band. A new relation between vacancy concentration, temperature, and oxygen partial pressure has been formulated which does not have the familiar appearance of a mass action type of equation

Determination of oxygen nonstoichiometry and diffusivity in mixed conducting oxides by oxygen Coulometric titration

Oxygen coulometric titration has been applied to measure chemical diffusion in La0.8Sr0.2CoO3-δ between 700 and 1000°C. The transient current response to a potentiostatic step has been transformed from the time domain to the frequency domain. The equivalent circuit used to fit the resulting impedance data contains the element that describes the finite-length diffusion of oxygen into the sample specimen. Other elements included are the gas-phase capacitance and the sum of the gas-phase diffusion resistance and that associated with the limited surface exchange kinetics of the sample. The chemical diffusion coefficient of perovskite La0.8Sr0.2CoO3-δ has been determined as a function of temperature and oxygen partial pressure. Its value can be represented by ~D (cm2/s) = 5.91 x exp [(-135 kJ/mol)/RT], and turns out to be practically independent of oxygen partial pressure in the range 10-2 - 0.209 bar

Giant Shapiro Steps in a Superconducting Network of Nanoscale Nb Islands

Recently, a dynamic vortex Mott transition has been observed in an array of superconducting nanodots. Here, we report the effect of the interaction of microwave radiation on this system and we show the occurrence of giant Shapiro steps

Manifestation of percolation in high temperature superconductivity

Emergent advanced electronic and magnetic functionalities in novel materials appear in systems with a complex lattice structure. The key point is understanding the intrinsic effect of lattice fluctuations on the relevant electronic features in the range of 10–100 meV near the Fermi level in new materials which is needed to develop advanced quantum nano-devices. This requires the control of structural inhomogeneity at multiple scales. Here we report some of the known advances in the field of percolative superconductivity. The necessity of the review is based on the growing consensus that the lack of an understanding of high temperature superconductivity is due to the few information on lattice fluctuations. In particular they could control the pseudo-gap phase, the electronic duality of holes in Fermi arcs and electrons in small Fermi pockets, multiple condensates in different points of the k-space. Moreover the emerging lattice granularity in cuprates shifts the search for the superconducting mechanism from a homogeneous superconductivity to a percolative superconductivity, therefore it is the scope of this review to provide further data to this kind of research