Overview

Project B06 develops an improved experimental understanding of grain boundaries in perovskites, in terms of their structure and chemistry at the atomic and nanometer scale, their electronic structure, local Fermi level and space charge layers, which are related to modelling of grain boundaries in the theory projects. State-of-the-art analytical (S)TEM techniques and to-be-developed 4D-STEM based approaches are employed to characterize (doped) BaTiO3 polycrystals and bicrystals. Furthermore, in situ (S)TEM experiments are used to correlate GB structure and chemistry with thermally induced segregation and, in turn, to determine how these changes affect the vicinity of the GB and grain growth.