Small Polaron Mobility in α‐LixO5

ESR and de conductivity measurements are performed on a α‐LixO5(x = 0.001) single crystal in the temperature range 4 to 293 K. They suggest that at low temperature, the unpaired electron remains localized in the field of lithium ion and is equally delocalized over four vanadium sites leading to the formation of a bound polaron characterized by a 29 hyperfine lines ESR spectrum. As the temperature is raised bound polarons are freed from the electrostatic field and the electrical properties of the sample above 250 K mainly arise from the hopping of free polarons between the vanadium sites. A comparison with previous measurements on non‐stoichiometric V2O5 shows that the activation energy corresponding to the hopping process of free polarons does not depend on the nature of the paramagnetic defect, but it appears that the energy needed to extract the bound polaron from the Coulomb field of the defect decreases when the overall radius of the defect increases.