Impact of uniaxial strain and doping on oxygen diffusion in CeO2

Doped ceria is an important electrolyte for solid oxide fuel cell applications. Molecular dynamics simulations have been used to investigate the impact of uniaxial strain along the <100> directions and rare-earth doping (Yb, Er, Ho, Dy, Gd, Sm, Nd and La) on oxygen diffusion. We introduce a new potential model that is able to describe the thermal expansion and elastic properties of ceria to give excellent agreement with experimental data. We calculate the activation energy of oxygen migration in the temperature range 900–1900 K for both unstrained and rare-earth doped ceria systems under tensile strain. Uniaxial strain has a considerable effect in lowering the activation energies of oxygen migration. A more pronounced increase in oxygen diffusivities is predicted at the lower end of the temperature range for all the dopants considered.