Spectroscopic studies of electronic structure in pristine and defective transition metal oxides

Abstract

Electronic structure measurements of materials in the presence of defects are inherently useful to advance our understanding of a materials properties. Within the paradigm of electromigration in Ti02 there are opportunities to study the effect of defects upon electronic structure particularly using elementally selective x-ray spectroscopic methods. In principle electromigration within rutile Ti02 can allow for the control of the density and distribution of oxygen vacancies without overall disruption or disorder of the preexisting crystal structure. This is the objective underpinning most of this work and this is investigated via electromigration experiments, optical and x-ray spectroscopic methods.