Intrinsic defects and conduction characteristics of Sc²O³ in thermionic cathode systems.

Recent experimental observations indicate that bulk Sc²0³ (~200 nm thick), an insulator at room temperature and pressure, must act as a good electronic conductor during thermionic cathode operation, leading to the observed high emitted current densities and overall superior emission properties over conventional thermionic emitters which do not contain ²0³. Here, we employ ab initio methods using both semilocal and hybrid functionals to calculate the intrinsic defect energetics of Sc and O vacancies and interstitials and their effects on the electronic properties of ²0³ in an effort to explain the good conduction of ²0³ observed in experiment. The defect energetics were used in an equilibrium defect model to calculate the concentrations of defects and their compensating electron and hole concentrations at equilibrium. Overall, our results indicate that the conductivity of ²0³ solely due to the presence of intrinsic defects in the cathode operating environment is unlikely to be high enough to maintain the magnitude of emitted current densities obtained from experiment, and that the presence of impurities is necessary to raise the conductivity of ²0³ to a high enough value to explain the current densities observed in experiment. The necessary minimum impurity concentration to impart sufficient electronic conduction is very small (approximately 7.5 × 10-³ ppm) and is probably present in all experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]