Hydrogen response to high-density dislocations in bulk perovskite oxide SrTiO3

TL;DR

This study reveals that high-density dislocations in bulk SrTiO3 significantly enhance hydrogen uptake and diffusion, providing new insights into hydrogen-dislocation interactions crucial for energy-related oxide applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first direct evidence that dislocations in brittle oxides act as effective reservoirs for hydrogen, advancing understanding of defect interactions in functional oxides.

Findings

Dislocation-rich regions show ~100 times more deuterium incorporation.

High dislocation density enhances hydrogen diffusion in SrTiO3.

Dislocations serve as effective reservoirs for hydrogen in oxides.

Abstract

Hydrogen plays an increasingly important role in green energy technologies. For instance, proton-conducting oxides with high performance for fuel cell components or electrolysers need to be developed. However, this requires a fundamental understanding of hydrogen-defects interactions. While point defects and grain boundaries in oxides have been extensively studied, the role of dislocations as line defects remains less understood, primarily due to the challenge for effective dislocation engineering in brittle oxides. In this work, we demonstrate the impact of dislocations in bulk single-crystal perovskite oxide SrTiO3 on hydrogen uptake and diffusion using deuterium as tracer. Dislocations with a high density up to ~10 to the power of 14 per square meter were mechanically introduced at room temperature. Exposing this dislocation-rich and the reference regions (with a dislocation density of ~10 to the power of 10 per square meter) to deuterium at 400 {\deg}C for 1h, followed by secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements, we observed a ~100 times increase in deuterium incorporation in the dislocation-rich region. The result suggests that dislocations in oxides can act as an effective reservoir for deuterium. This proof-of-concept brings new insights into the emerging hydrogen-dislocation interactions in functional oxides.