Exploring oxygen coordination in defect-fluorite Dy2Zr2O7

Defect-fluorite is the generic name given to samples with chemical formula RE2B2O7 (where RE, B, and O are rare-earth, transition metal and oxygen, respectively), which were not formed in the Fd-3m space group. The space group Fm-3m describes the highest symmetry those compounds can adopt, but atomic occupancies, especially of the oxygen anion, may vary considerably from the nominal 2-2-7 values. The motivation of this proposal is to investigate these variations and determine how they affect the structure of defect-fluorites locally and on average. To do so, we propose to carry out total neutron scattering measurements on POLARIS. These data are going to contribute to a better understanding of the (most often) neglected fluorite compounds.