Phenomenological theory of bulk diffusion in metal oxides

Phenomenological description of bulk diffusion in oxide ceramics has been proposed. Variants of vacancy and vacancy-free diffusion models have been considered. In the vacancy models, ion migration is described as a fluctuation with the formation of a “liquid corridor”, along which the diffusion ion transport in a “melt” is performed, or, as a fluctuation with the formation of an “empty corridor”, in which the ion motion proceeds without activation. The vacancy-free model considers a fluctuation with the formation of a spherical liquid region whose sizes correspond to the first coordination sphere. It has been shown that both the vacancy models work in cubic metal oxides and the vacancy-free model is effective for describing diffusion in oxides having a noncubic structure. Detailed comparison of the models developed has been performed. It has been shown that the values of the activation energies for diffusion of metal and oxygen ions agree with the published data on bulk diffusion in stoichiometric oxide ceramics.