Grain-boundary plane orientation dependence of electrical barriers at Σ5 boundaries in SrTiO3

✍ Scribed by Sung Bo Lee; Jong-Heun Lee; Yoon-Ho Cho; Doh-Yeon Kim; Wilfried Sigle; Fritz Phillipp; Peter A. van Aken

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 854 KB
• Volume: 56
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1359-6454
• DOI: 10.1016/j.actamat.2008.06.019

✦ Synopsis

Dependence of the electrical properties on grain-boundary plane orientation is examined by a combination of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, impedance spectroscopy, and electron energy-loss spectrometry using two kinds of SrTiO 3 R5 ([1 0 0]/36.8°) bicrystalline grain boundaries: symmetric (3 1 0) (18.4°/18.4°) and asymmetric (8.4°/28.4°). While the symmetric grain boundary is observed to be straight with the symmetric (3 1 0)//(3 1 0) plane orientation, the asymmetric grain boundary is faceted into symmetric (3 1 0)//(3 1 0) and (2 1 0)//(2 1 0), and asymmetric (1 0 0)//(4 3 0). Grain-boundary impedance is observed only in the asymmetric grain boundary, and the electron energy-loss spectrometry quantification indicates that the asymmetric (1 0 0)//(4 3 0) facets are more oxygen-deficient than the symmetric ones. The results suggest that the asymmetric (1 0 0)//(4 3 0) facets are the most resistive among the three different facets.