Melting sublattice

Historically, Agl-based (soft framework, a situation similar to that in plastic acid sulphate) materials were the first solid electrolytes to be studied in detail. Their structural disorder is believed to correspond to Ag ion sublattice melting and the transport is governed by the immobile , counter ion lattice potential (low density approximation). This quasi-liquid state can be described by generalized Langevin dynamics... 

Every ionic crystal can formally be regarded as a mutually interconnected composite of two distinct structures cationic sublattice and anionic sublattice, which may or may not have identical symmetry. Silver iodide exhibits two structures thermodynamically stable below 146°C sphalerite (below 137°C) and wurtzite (137-146°C), with a plane-centred I- sublattice. This changes into a body-centred one at 146°C, and it persists up to the melting point of Agl (555°C). On the other hand, the Ag+ sub-lattice is much less stable it collapses at the phase transition temperature (146°C) into a highly disordered, liquid-like system, in which the Ag+ ions are easily mobile over all the 42 theoretically available interstitial sites in the I-sub-lattice. This system shows an Ag+ conductivity of 1.31 S/cm at 146°C (the regular wurtzite modification of Agl has an ionic conductivity of about 10-3 S/cm at this temperature). 

In theory, the III-V compound semiconductors and their alloys are made from a one to one proportion of elements of the III and V columns of the periodic table. Most of them crystallize in the sphalerite (zinc-blende ZnS) structure. This structure is very similar to that of diamond but in the III-V compounds, the two cfc sublattices are different the anion sublattice contains the group V atoms and the cation sublattice the group III atoms. An excess of one of the constituents in the melt or in the growing atmosphere can induce excess atoms of one type (group V for instance) to occupy sites of the opposite sublattice (cation sublattice). Such atoms are said to be in an antisite configuration. Other possibilities related with deviations from stoichiometry are the existence of vacancies (absence of atoms on atomic sites) on the sublattice of the less abundant constituent and/or of interstitial atoms of the most abundant one. 

The conducting ion sublattice in FICs is generally considered molten . The molten sublattice model for fast ion conduction was first proposed by Strock (1936) on the basis of structural and thermodynamic data for Agl. In most FICs, the entropy of the phase transition to the FIC state is larger than the entropy of melting. For example, in Agl the entropy of the transition at 420 K from the -form to the a-form (FIC state) is 14.7 J deg mol , whereas the entropy of melting at 861 K is only 11 J deg mol . ... 

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