Diffusion of Oxygen in Selected Monocrystalline Rare Earth Oxides

The diffusion of oxygen in monocrystalline ScaO3, YzO3, Dy,O2, HosO3, Er2O3, Tm2O2, and Lu2O3 was measured by a thermobalance technique. The reoxidation of partially reduced crystals of these materials was treated as a diffusion-controlled process with a moving boundary. Large diffusion coefficients and fairly low activation energies were found for this process, in agreement with a proposed migration mechanism which involves the inherently defective anion sublattice of these materials.