The physics of defect chemistry and the chemistry of defect physics
New Publication
2025/04/15
This tutorial-article explores two ways of looking at defects in solids. One perspective, called defect chemistry, treats them with chemical reaction rules: concentrations of defects change depending on the chemical environment, and everything must balance in terms of charge and atoms. The other perspective, defect physics, uses thermodynamics and quantum mechanics to calculate how much energy is needed to form a defect. This energy depends on both the position of the Fermi level and the chemical environment.
The authors show how these two perspectives can be connected, so that results from experiments and from theory can be directly compared. As an example, they look at how materials respond when doped: sometimes the extra charges are balanced by electronic changes, sometimes by ionic ones. The balance depends strongly on the energy positions of the valence and conduction bands. Since these band energies shift with composition, materials can be tuned so that one or the other compensation mechanism dominates.
Klein, Andreas; Sudarikov, Denis (2025): The physics of defect chemistry and the chemistry of defect physics. In: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 27 (13), pp. 6390-6399.
Read the full article here.
This summary was created by AI.
