Exploring the thermal expansion of fluorides and oxyfluorides with rhenium trioxide-type structures: From negative to positive thermal expansion.

摘要

This thesis explores the thermal expansion and high pressure behavior of some materials with the ReO3 structure type. This structure is simple and has, in principle, all of the features necessary for negative thermal expansion (NTE) arising from the transverse thermal motion of the bridging anions and the coupled rotation of rigid units; however, ReO 3 itself only exhibits mild NTE across a narrow temperature range at low temperatures. ReO3 is metallic because of a delocalized d-electron, and this may contribute to the lack of NTE in this material. The materials examined in this thesis are all based on d 0 metal ions so that the observed thermal expansion behavior should arise from vibrational, rather than electronic, effects.;In Chapter 2, the thermal expansion of scandium fluoride, ScF3 , is examined using a combination of in situ synchrotron X-ray and neutron variable temperature diffraction. ScF3 retains the cubic ReO3 structure across the entire temperature range examined (10 – 1600 K) and exhibits pronounced negative thermal expansion at low temperatures. The magnitude of NTE in this material is comparable to that of cubic ZrW2O8, which is perhaps the most widely studied NTE material, at room temperature and below. This is the first report of NTE in an ReO3 type structure across a wide temperature range.;Chapter 3 presents a comparison between titanium oxyfluoride, TiOF 2, and a vacancy-containing titanium hydroxyoxyfluoride, Ti x(O/OH/F)3. TiOF2 was originally reported to adopt the cubic ReO3 structure type under ambient conditions, therefore the initial goal for this study was to examine the thermal expansion of this material and determine if it displayed interesting behavior such as NTE. During the course of the study, it was discovered that the original synthetic method resulted in Tix(O/OH/F)3, which does adopt the cubic ReO3 structure type. The chemical composition of the hydroxyoxyfluoride is highly dependent upon synthesis conditions and subsequent heat treatments. This material readily pyrohydrolyizes at low temperatures (≈350 K). It was also observed that TiOF does not adopt the cubic ReO 3 structure; at room temperature it adopts a rhombohedrally distorted variant of the ReO3 structure. Positive thermal expansion was observed for TiOF2 from 120 K through decomposition into TiO2. At ≈400 K, TiOF2 undergoes a structural phase transition from rhombohedral to cubic symmetry. High pressure diffraction studies revealed a cubic to rhombohedral phase transition for Tix(O/OH/F) 3 between 0.5-1 GPa. No phase transitions were observed for TiOF 2 on compression.;In Chapter 4, an in situ variable pressure-temperature diffraction experiment examining the effects of pressure on the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) for ScF3 and TaO2F is presented. In the manufacture and use of composites, which is a possible application for low and NTE materials, stresses may be experienced. Pressure was observed to have a negligible effect on cubic ScF3's CTE; however, for TaO 2F the application of modest pressures, such as those that might be experienced in the manufacture or use of composites, has a major effect on its CTE. This effect is associated with a pressure-induced phase transition from cubic to rhombohedral symmetry upon compression. TaO2F was prepared from the direct reaction of Ta2O5 with TaF 5 and from the digestion of Ta2O5 in hot hydrofluoric acid. The effects of pressure on the two samples of TaO2F were qualitatively similar. The slightly different properties for the samples are likely due to differences in their thermal history leading to differing arrangements of oxide and fluoride in these disordered materials.;In Chapter 5, the local structures of TiOF2 and TaO2 F are examined using pair distribution functions (PDFs) obtained from X-ray total scattering experiments. In these materials, the anions (O/F) are disordered over the available anion positions. While traditional X-ray diffraction provides detailed information about the average structures of these materials, it is not sufficient to fully understand their thermal expansion. Fits of simple structural models to the low r portions of PDFs for these materials indicate the presence of geometrically distinct M –X–M (M = Ti, Ta; X = O, F) linkages, and a simple analysis of the TaO2F variable temperature PDFs indicates that these distinct links respond differently to temperature.