Exploratory synthesis is the discovery of new compounds with interesting structures and properties. The subject of this thesis is exploratory synthesis of bismuth containing oxides. Bismuth containing oxides have many interesting properties, which are ionic conductivity, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, ferroelectricity, ferroelasticity and catalytic. These properties are closely related to their specific...
Amorphous metal thin films lack the grain boundaries and dislocations present in
crystalline metal films. As a result, amorphous metal films can be more mechanically robust, atomically smooth, and more resistant to chemical attack than crystalline metals. However, amorphous metals are meta-stable and subject to crystallization upon heating, thus limiting...
Due to the high cost of precursor materials, complex oxides of 4d and 5d transition metals are under-studied compared to their 3d counterparts. Recent studies have shown that oxides containing heavier transition metals can exhibit exotic electronic states due to presence of strong spin-orbit coupling. The goal of this dissertation...
The structure–property relationships of solid solutions within the YbFe₂O₄ family of compounds have been studied in relation to their optical, dielectric and magnetic properties. This family of compounds is of recent interest because of the trigonal bipyramid coordination that is rarely observed in transition metal oxides. The systematic study of...
Transition metal oxides exhibit potential in various application fields due to the special d-electrons. Solid state chemistry focuses on discovering the structure-property relationships. The work in this thesis mainly discusses compounds with hexagonal or brownmillerite-type structure and their practical properties.
Hexagonal YIn[subscript 1-x]Fe[subscript x]O₃ (x = 0-0.3, 0.7-1.0) phases have...
Transition metal oxides are an important class of materials for the wide variety optical, electrical, dielectric, magnetic, and thermal properties observed. Their unique structure-property relationships allow for property tuning and often provide insight into the fundamentals of chemistry. The work in this thesis was focused on the design, synthesis and...