No Arabic abstract
Developing good performance and low-cost oxygen permeable membranes for CO2 capture based on the oxy-fuel concept is greatly desirable but challenging. Despite tremendous efforts in exploring new CO2-stable dual-phase membranes, its presence is however still far from meeting the industrial requirements. Here we report a series of new Ca-containing CO2-resistant oxygen transporting membranes with composition 60wt.%Ce0.9Ln0.1O2-40wt.%Ln0.6Ca0.4FeO3(CLnO-LnCFO; Ln = La, Pr, Nd, Sm) synthesized via a Pechini one-pot method. Our results indicate all investigated compounds are composed of perovskite and fluorite phases, while the perovskite phases in the CNO-NCFO and CSO-SCFO membranes after sintering generates Ca-rich and Ca-less two kinds of grains with different morphologies, where the Ca-less small perovskite grains block the transport of oxygen ions and eventually result in poor oxygen permeability. Among our investigated CLnO-LnCFO membranes, CPO-PCFO exhibits the highest oxygen permeability and excellent CO2 stability, which were mainly associated with the improvement in crystal symmetry, non-negligible electronic conductivity of fluorite phase and the enhancement in electronic conductivity of perovskite. Our results establish Ca-containing oxides as candidate material platforms for membrane engineering devices that combine CO2 capture and oxygen separation.
A review of our investigations on single crystals of LnFeAsO1-xFx (Ln=La, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd) and Ba1-xRbxFe2As2 is presented. A high pressure technique has been applied for the growth of LnFeAsO1-xFx crystals, while Ba1-xRbxFe2As2 crystals were grown using quartz ampoule method. Single crystals were used for electrical transport, structure, magnetic torque and spectroscopic studies. Investigations of the crystal structure confirmed high structural perfection and show less than full occupation of the (O, F) position in superconducting LnFeAsO1-xFx crystals. Resistivity measurements on LnFeAsO1-xFx crystals show a significant broadening of the transition in high magnetic fields, whereas the resistive transition in Ba1 xRbxFe2As2 simply shifts to lower temperature. Critical current density for both compounds is relatively high and exceeds 2x109 A/m2 at 15 K in 7 T. The anisotropy of magnetic penetration depth, measured on LnFeAsO1-xFx crystals by torque magnetometry is temperature dependent and apparently larger than the anisotropy of the upper critical field. Ba1-xRbxFe2As2 crystals are electronically significantly less anisotropic. Point-Contact Andreev-Reflection spectroscopy indicates the existence of two energy gaps in LnFeAsO1-xFx. Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy reveals in addition to a superconducting gap, also some feature at high energy (~20 meV).
We have synthesized a series of the Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate solid solution Ln4-xLnxNi3O10 (Ln and Ln = La, Pr and Nd; x = 0, 1, 2 and 3) via the citrate precursor method at different reacting atmospheres. Both the electronic-transport and magnetization measurements on these samples show well-defined phase transitions at temperatures between 135 K and 165 K. These transition temperatures, the room-temperature resistivities, as well as the changes of the Pauli-paramagnetic susceptibilities at the respective phase transitions, strongly correlate with the Goldschmidt tolerance factor t, irrespective of the combination of the magnetic rare-earth ions with unmagnetic La3+. We conclude that these changes of the electronic properties are mostly related to the distortion of the NiO6 octahedra at the phase transition which is strongly correlated with the tolerance factor t, but are rather insensitive to the magnetism of the rare-earth ions Ln3+ and Ln3+.
Single crystals of the LnFeAsO (Ln1111, Ln = Pr, Nd, and Sm) family with lateral dimensions up to 1 mm were grown from NaAs and KAs flux at high pressure. The crystals are of good structural quality and become superconducting when O is partially substituted by F (PrFeAsO1-xFx and NdFeAsO1-xFx) or when Fe is substituted by Co (SmFe1-xCoxAsO). From magnetization measurements, we estimate the temperature dependence and anisotropy of the upper critical field and the critical current density of underdoped PrFeAsO0.7F0.3 crystal with Tc = 25 K. Single crystals of SmFe1-xCoxAsO with maximal Tc up to 16.3 K for x = 0.08 were grown for the first time. From transport and magnetic measurements we estimate the critical fields and their anisotropy, and find these superconducting properties to be quite comparable to the ones in SmFeAsO1-xFx with a much higher Tc of = 50 K. The magnetically measured critical current densities are as high as 109 A/m2 at 2 K up to 7 T, with indication of the usual fishtail effect. The upper critical field estimated from resistivity measurements is anisotropic with slopes of -8.7 T/K (H // ab-plane) and -1.7 T/K (H // c-axis). This anisotropy (= 5) is similar to that in other Ln1111 crystals with various higher Tc s.
We investigate the effect of external pressure on magnetic order in undoped LnFeAsO (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, La) by using muon-spin relaxation measurements and ab-initio calculations. Both magnetic transition temperature $T_m$ and Fe magnetic moment decrease with external pressure. The effect is observed to be lanthanide dependent with the strongest response for Ln = La and the weakest for Ln = Sm. The trend is qualitatively in agreement with our DFT calculations. The same calculations allow us to assign a value of 0.68(2) $mu_B$ to the Fe moment, obtained from an accurate determination of the muon sites. Our data further show that the magnetic lanthanide order transitions do not follow the simple trend of Fe, possibly as a consequence of the different $f$-electron overlap.
We report a comprehensive investigation of Ln2NiIrO6 (Ln = La, Pr, Nd) using thermodynamic and transport properties, neutron powder diffraction, resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate the role of A-site cations on the magnetic interactions in this family of hybrid 3d-5d-4f compositions. Magnetic structure determination using neutron diffraction reveals antiferromagnetism for La2NiIrO6, a collinear ferrimagnetic Ni/Ir state that is driven to long range antiferromagnetism upon the onset of Nd ordering in Nd2NiIrO6, and a non-collinear ferrimagnetic Ni/Ir sublattice interpenetrated by a ferromagnetic Pr lattice for Pr2NiIrO6. For Pr2NiIrO6 heat capacity results reveal the presence of two independent magnetic sublattices and transport resistivity indicates insulating behavior and a conduction pathway that is thermally mediated. First principles DFT calculation elucidates the existence of the two independent magnetic sublattices within Pr2NiIrO6 and offers insight into the behavior in La2NiIrO6 and Nd2NiIrO6. Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering is consistent with spin-orbit coupling splitting the t2g manifold of octahedral Ir4+ into a Jeff = 1/2 and Jeff = 3/2 state for all members of the series considered.