The appearance of microcracks in cerium oxide (CeO 2) buffer layers, as used in buffer layer architectures for coated superconductors, indicates the presence of stress between this buffer layer and the substrate. This stress can originate from the differences in thermal expansion or differences in lattice parameters between the CeO 2 buffer layer and the substrate. In this article, we study, by means of ab initio density functional theory calculations, the influence of group IV doping elements on the lattice parameter and bulk modulus of CeO 2. Vegard's law behavior is found for the lattice parameter in systems without oxygen vacancies, and the Shannon crystal radii for the doping elements are retrieved from the lattice expansions. We show that the lattice parameter of the doped CeO 2 can be matched to that of the La 2Zr 2O 7 coated NiW substrate substrate for dopant concentrations of about 5%, and that bulk modulus matching is either not possible or would require extreme doping concentrations. [All rights reserved Elsevier].
Open Access version available at UGent repositoryThe crystal structure of lanthanum cerium oxide (La2Ce2O7) is investigated using ab initio density functional theory calculations. The relative stability of fluorite- and pyrochlorelike structures is studied through comparison of their formation energies. These formation energies show the pyrochlore structure to be favored over the fluorite structure, apparently contradicting the conclusions based on experimental neutron and x-ray diffraction (XRD). By calculating and comparing XRD spectra for a set of differently ordered and random structures, we show that the pyrochlore structure is consistent with diffraction experiments. For these reasons, we suggest the pyrochlore structure as the ground-state crystal structure for La2Ce2O7. © 2011 American Physical Society
