Yousaf Muhammad, Lu Yuzheng, Hu Enyi, Akbar Muhammad, Shah Muhammad Ali Kamran Yousaf, Noor Asma, Akhtar Majid Niaz, Mushtaq Naveed, Yan Senlin, Xia Chen, Zhu Bin
Energy Storage Joint Research Center, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, P. R. China.
School of Electronic Engineering, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, 211171, P. R. China.
Small Methods. 2023 Sep;7(9):e2300450. doi: 10.1002/smtd.202300450. Epub 2023 Jul 19.
The interfacial disorder is a general method to change the metal-oxygen compatibility and carrier density of heterostructure materials for ionic transport modulation. Herein, to enable high proton conduction, a semiconductor heterostructure based on spinel ZnFe O (ZFO) and fluorite CeO is developed and investigated in terms of structural characterization, first principle calculation, and electrochemical performance. Particular attention is paid to the interfacial disordering and heterojunction effects of the material. Results show that the heterostructure induces a disordered oxygen region at the hetero-interface of ZFO-CeO by dislocating oxygen atoms, leading to fast proton transport. As a result, the ZFO-CeO exhibits a high proton conductivity of 0.21 S cm and promising fuel cell power output of 1070 mW cm at 510 °C. Based upon these findings, a new mechanism is proposed by focusing on the change of O-O bond length to interpret the diffusion and acceleration of protons in ZFO-CeO on the basis of the Grotthuss mechanism. This study provides a new strategy to customize semiconductor heterostructure to enable fast proton conduction.
界面无序是一种改变异质结构材料的金属 - 氧兼容性和载流子密度以进行离子传输调制的通用方法。在此，为了实现高质子传导，开发了一种基于尖晶石ZnFe₂O₄（ZFO）和萤石CeO₂的半导体异质结构，并对其进行了结构表征、第一性原理计算和电化学性能研究。特别关注了该材料的界面无序和异质结效应。结果表明，该异质结构通过使氧原子错位在ZFO - CeO₂的异质界面处诱导出一个无序氧区域，从而导致快速质子传输。因此，ZFO - CeO₂在510℃时表现出0.21 S cm⁻¹的高质子电导率和1070 mW cm⁻²的有望的燃料电池功率输出。基于这些发现，通过关注O - O键长的变化，在Grotthuss机制的基础上提出了一种新的机制来解释质子在ZFO - CeO₂中的扩散和加速。这项研究提供了一种定制半导体异质结构以实现快速质子传导的新策略。
