Achieving fast oxygen diffusion in perovskites by cation ordering

The oxygen-exchange behavior has been studied in half-doped manganese and cobalt perovskite oxides. We have found that the oxygen diffusivity in Gd0.5Ba0.5MnO3−δ can be enhanced by orders of magnitude by inducing crystallographic ordering among lanthanide and alkali-earth ions in the A-site sublattice. Transformation of a simple cubic perovskite, with randomly occupied A sites, into a layered crystal GdBaMn2O5+x (or isostructural GdBaCo2O5+x for cobalt oxide) with alternating lanthanide and alkali-earth planes reduces the oxygen bonding strength and provides disorder-free channels for ion motion, pointing to an efficient way to design new ionic conductors.