Papers by Author: Karla J. Moreno

Abstract: In this paper, we studied the influence of the silver nanoparticles size on the electrical conductivity of PEDOT:PSS in Ag(PEDOT:PSS) films. The silver nanoparticles were synthesized in presence of PEDOT:PSS by varying the molar ratio between AgNO3 and the reducing agent (NaBH4). Both the particle size determined by TEM and the plasmon band obtained by UV-Vis spectroscopy were found to be strongly dependent on the reducing agent concentration. The electrical conductivity increases inversely with the concentration of reducing agent from 5.24 x 10-4 up to 1.63 S/cm; three orders of magnitude higher than pristine PEDOT:PSS.

Abstract: We investigate the effect of cation size in the dc activation energy needed for oxygen ion conductivity, Edc, in highly disordered pyrochlore-type ionic conductors A2B2O7. Twenty compositions of general formula Ln2Zr2-yTiyO7 (Ln = Y, Dy and Gd) and Gd2-yLayZr2O7, were prepared by mechanical milling and their electrical properties measured by using impedance spectroscopy at different temperatures. We also evaluate, by using Ngai’s Coupling Model, the effect of cation radii RA and RB, on the microscopic potential-energy barrier, Ea, that oxygen ions encounter when jumping into neighboring vacant sites. We find that for a fixed B-site cation radius RB, both activation energies decrease with increasing A-site cation size, RA, as a consequence of the increment in the unit cell volume. In contrast, and for a given RA size, the dc activation energy Edc of the Ln2Zr2-yTiyO7 series increases when the average RB size increases. The latter behavior is explained in terms of the enhanced interactions among mobile oxygen ions as the structural disorder increases when RB approaches RA.