Recently, a new family of lithium-rich antiperovskites, Li 3 OA (A = halogen), which presents superionic conductivity, emerged as a promising both safe and commercially applicable solid electrolyte for lithium ion batteries. In this paper we employed classical atomistic quasistatic calculations to obtain the concentration of lithium vacancies and interstitials for stoichiometric samples of Li 3 OCl. The obtained concentrations as well as vacancy and interstitial migration energies reinforced the assumption that vacancies are the charge carriers in both stoichiometric and divalent metal doped samples, but raise the possibility that the high ionic conductivity in LiCl-deficient samples are in fact driven by interstitials, in opposition to what has been assumed so far. The Li 3 OCl stability at higher temperatures was investigated based on Gibbs energies of decomposition from 0 K up to 550 K. They are negative in the whole temperature range, which suggests that there exists a high Gibbs energy barrier between Li 3 OCl and starter materials preventing decomposition.

No abstract

No abstract

The mode assignment of the cubic phase of anhydrous Na 2 MoO 4 was carried out on the basis of lattice dynamic calculation using the classical rigid-ion model. Temperature-dependent studies indicate that this crystal remains in the cubic structure in the 15-773 K range and undergoes a phase transition at around 783 K. The behavior of the Raman modes indicates that this transition is strongly first-order in nature and the phase above 773 K may have an orthorhombic symmetry. This transition is connected with tilting and/or rotations of the MoO 4 tetrahedra, which lead to a disorder at the MoO 4 sites. Our results give also evidence that the Mo-O bond lengths decrease in the high-temperature phase.

No abstract

In this work a new empirical tolerance factor for compounds with pyrochlore structure is proposed. This suggested tolerance factor is based on experimental structural data and on the tolerance factors proposed. However, since it does not depend on the structural data, this new tolerance factor permits the prediction of some properties of these compounds directly. Also, a good structure stability field for the pyrochlore formation is observed when this tolerance factor is used.

In this letter we investigated the temperature-dependent Raman spectra of CaMn7O12 helimagnet from room temperature down to 10 K. The temperature dependence of the Raman mode parameters show remarkable anomalies for both antiferromagnetic and incommensurate transitions that this compound undergoes at low temperatures. The anomalies observed at the magnetic ordering transition indicate a spin-phonon coupling at higher-temperature magnetic transition in this material, while a magnetostrinction effect at the lower-temperature magnetic transition.

No abstract