Oxygen-deficient perovskites: linking structure, energetics and ion transport.

The present review focuses on links between structure, energetics and ion transport in oxygen-deficient perovskite oxides, ABO(3-delta). The perfect long-range order, convenient for interpretations of the structure and properties of ordered materials, is evidently not present in disordered materials and highly defective perovskite oxides are spatially inhomogeneous on an intermediate length scale. Although this makes a fundamental description of these and other disordered materials very difficult, it is becoming increasingly clear that this complexity is often essential for the functional properties.

Size mismatch effects in oxide solid solutions using Monte Carlo and configurational averaging.

Local minima configurational averaging (CA) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are used to examine in detail the variation of thermodynamic and structural properties of binary oxide solid solutions with the volume mismatch between the end members. The maximum volume mismatch studied corresponds to that in the CaO MgO solid solution, a prototype example of a strongly non-ideal system with large miscibility gap. In addition, solid solutions of CaO-HypO using designed hypothetical atoms (Hyp) with atomic radii between those of Ca2+ and Mg2+ have been considered.