The electrical conductivity of dense and nanoporous zirconia‐based thin films is compared to results obtained on bulk yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) ceramics. Different thin film preparation methods are used in order to vary grain size, grain shape, and porosity of the thin films. In porous films, a rather high conductivity is found at room temperature which decreases with increasing temperature to 120 °C. This conductivity is attributed to proton conduction along physisorbed water (Grotthuss mechanism) at the inner surfaces. It is highly dependent on the humidity of the surrounding atmosphere. At temperatures above 120 °C, the conductivity is thermally activated with activation energies between 0.4 and 1.1 eV. In this temperature regime the conduction is due to oxygen ions as well as protons. Proton conduction is caused by hydroxyl groups at the inner surface of the porous films. The effect vanishes above 400 °C, and pure oxygen ion conductivity with an activation energy of 0.9 to 1.3 eV prevails. The same behavior can also be observed in nanoporous bulk ceramic YSZ. In contrast to the nanoporous YSZ, fully dense nanocrystalline thin films only show oxygen ion conductivity, even down to 70 °C with an expected activation energy of 1.0 ± 0.1 eV. No proton conductivity through grain boundaries could be detected in these nanocrystalline, but dense thin films.

Artificial multiferroic systems, in which novel properties can emerge from elastic coupling between piezoelectric and magnetostrictive phases, are a promising route to obtain significant room-temperature magnetoelectric coupling at the nanoscale. In this work, we have used element-specific soft x-ray photoemission electron microscopy to spatially resolve the effects of ferroelectric BaTiO 3 on the magnetic properties of ferromagnetic layers of CoFe 2 O 4 and NiFe 2 O 4 . Resulting from the large magnetoelastic anisotropy present in these artificial multiferroic systems, a modification of the orientation and symmetry of the magnetic easy axes of the ferromagnetic film upon changing the underlying domain structure of the ferroelectric has been observed. This opens the possibility to strain-imprint magnetic states in these systems.

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Partially amorphous La 0.6 Sr 0.4 CoO 3-δ (LSC) thin-fi lm cathodes are fabricated using pulsed laser deposition and are integrated in free-standing micro-solid oxide fuel cells (micro-SOFC) with a 3YSZ electrolyte and a Pt anode. A low degree of crystallinity of the LSC layers is achieved by taking advantage of the miniaturization of the cells, which permits low-temperature operation (300-450 °C). Thermomechanically stable micro-SOFC are obtained with strongly buckled electrolyte membranes. The nanoporous columnar microstructure of the LSC layers provides a large surface area for oxygen incorporation and is also believed to reduce the amount of stress at the cathode/ electrolyte interface. With a high rate of failure-free micro-SOFC membranes, it is possible to avoid gas cross-over and open-circuit voltages of 1.06 V are attained. First power densities as high as 200-262 mW cm −2 at 400-450 °C are achieved. The area-specifi c resistance of the oxygen reduction reaction is lower than 0.3 Ω cm 2 at 400 °C around the peak power density. These outstanding fi ndings demonstrate that partially amorphous oxides are promising electrode candidates for the next-generation of solid oxide fuel cells working at low-temperatures.

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The aim of this work is to study the significance of negative ions in the plasma produced by ablation of a simple oxide ceramic target (Al 2 O 3 ) at distances and fluences typically used in pulsed-laser deposition processes. The results show that negative ions are indeed produced, the majority of which (>82%) being O − that are predominantly produced by neutralization of O + followed by electron attachment. They represent one third of the O + population at low fluences for a distance of 4 cm from the target at which most deposition experiments are performed. AlO − represents up to 15% of the negative ions and their amount increases at the expense of O − as fluence is increased. The most abundant as well as the fastest species in the plasma is by far Al + that represent >80% of ions having kinetic energy <100 eV at low fluences. This result is consistent with earlier discussion on the possible existence of direct photoionization processes due to the high (6.4 eV) photon energy. Saturation effects, the formation mechanism for AlO − and Al 2+ , and expansion dynamics for negative ions are finally discussed.