Ceria: Relation among thermodynamic, electronic hole and proton properties

The proton solubility and the hole conductivity of the rare earth doped ceria have been examined in their relations to the thermodynamic properties of doped ceria under the assumption that the hypothetical species, LnOOH and LnOO (Ln = Rare earth), can be regarded as constituents for representing protons and holes in the fluorite lattice. Focus is made on the dopant dependence, the host dependence and the temperature dependence in the rare earth doped zirconia(or ceria) fluorite lattice. The chemical potentials of the rare earth dopant are less stabilized in the ceria-based oxides than in the zirconia-based ones. The proton solubility in the ceria-based, zirconia-based, and ceria–zirconia solid solutions has been well interpreted in terms mainly of the hydroxidation energy and the stabilization energy of LnO1.5 in the fluorite lattice. Since the dopant dependence of the stabilization energy of LnO1.5 is stronger than the hydroxidation energy, the proton solubility becomes high in the smaller dopants. To account for less dopant-dependent behavior in the hole conduction, the peroxidation energy is assumed to have about the same dopant dependence as the stabilization energy. The calculated temperature dependences of proton solubility and hole concentration were compared with available experimental data; it has been suggested that holes and protons in ceria reach to saturation levels with lowering temperature. Some discussions are made on the possible explanation on recently observed anomalous hole conductivity in nano-size Ce0.8Gd0.2O1.9 in terms of plausible effects of miscibility gap, associated Gd enrichment, and simultaneous formation of Ce3+ and holes.