Oxygen Vacancy Ordering and the Conductivity Maximum in Y2O3-Doped CeO2

The defect structure and ionic diffusion processes within the anion-deficient, fluorite structured system Ce1-xYxO2-x/2 have been investigated at high temperatures (873 K-1073 K) as a function of dopant concentration, x, using a combination of neutron diffraction studies, impedance spectroscopy measurements, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using interionic potentials developed from ab initio calculations. Particular attention is paid to the short-range ion-ion correlations, with no strong evidence that the anion vacancies prefer, at high temperature, to reside in the vicinity of either cationic species. However, the vacancy-vacancy interactions play a more important role, with preferential ordering of vacancy pairs along the < 111 > directions, driven by their strong repulsion at closer distances, becoming dominant at high values of x. This effect explains the presence of a maximum in the ionic conductivity in the intermediate temperature range as a function of increasing x. The wider implications of these conclusions for understanding the structure property relationships within anion-deficient fluorite structured oxides are briefly discussed, with reference to complementary studies of yttria and/or scandia doped zirconia published previously.