Experimental study demonstrates chemical control of grain boundary space charge fields in solid electrolytes, suggesting new design strategies for solid-state energy storage and microelectronics.
Grain boundaries (GBs) are unavoidable extended defects in polycrystalline materials that often lead to charge‐carrier blocking. Their presence, in turn, depresses device performance and/or accelerates degradation. Attempts to systematically identify the source or control these barriers remain scarce. Here, we investigate the ability to locally engineer GB chemistry and net charge in the model oxygen‐ion solid electrolyte Gd‐doped CeO 2 via an infiltration protocol that enables selective doping of the GBs. In so doing, we demonstrate unprecedented control over GB resistance via control of local space charge fields, leading to reduction or enhancement of many orders of magnitude in GB resistance. Our advances lay the foundation for extending GB engineering to a wide range of electroceramic applications, from energy storage/conversion to microelectronics and other novel applications requiring controlled GB barriers for enhanced performance.
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Sha et al. (2026) studied this question.
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