No abstract

Rare earth (or yttrium) doped BaCeO 3 has been widely investigated as a proton conducting material. Usually, the trivalent dopants are assumed to occupy the Ce 4+ -site, which introduces oxygen vacancies into the perovskite structure and furthers the protonic conductivity. Recent studies indicate the possibility of dopant incorporation on the Ba 2+ -site, which is unfavorable for protonic conductivity. In this work atomistic simulation techniques, especially the supercell approach, have been developed to investigate the questions of dopant site-selectivity and cation nonstoichiometry in doped BaCeO 3 . Our calculations predict that, on energetic grounds, Ba 2+ -site deficiency shifts trivalent dopant incorporation onto the Ba 2+ -site. These results confirm that the dopant partitioning or site-occupancy of trivalent dopants will be sensitive to the precise Ba/Ce ratio, and hence to the experimental processing conditions. The relative energies explain the experimentally observed "amphoteric" behavior of Nd with significant dopant partitioning over both Ba and Ce sites. Such partitioning reduces the concentration of oxygen vacancies, which, in turn, lowers proton uptake and decreases proton conductivity relative to dopant incorporation solely on the Ce 4+ site.

No abstract

The synthesis and characterization of a series of pentaborate(1-) salts of substituted pyrrolidinium cations [C4H8NH2][B5O6(OH)4] (), [C4H8NMe2][B5O6(OH)4] () [C4H8NMeH][B5O6(OH)4] (), [(2-CH2OH)C4H7NH2][B5O6(OH)4] () is reported. All compounds were characterized by single-crystal XRD studies with (1/2CH3COCH3) and (1/2H2O) solvated. TGA/DSC analysis of the pentaborates showed that they thermally decomposed in air at 800 °C to 2.5 B2O3, in a 2 step process involving dehydration (<250 °C) and oxidative decomposition (250-600 °C). BET analysis of materials derived thermally from the pentaborates and had internal porosities of <1 m(2) g(-1), indicating they were non-porous. All compounds show extensive supramolecular H-bonded anionic lattices. H-bond interactions are described in detail and motifs found in these and in other pentaborate structures have been examined and modelled by DFT calculations. These calculations confirm that H-bonds interactions in pentaborates are moderately strong (ca. -10 to -21 kJ mol(-1)) and are likely to dominate the energetics of their templated syntheses.

No abstract

The borate anions [B(OH)

No abstract

No abstract