PNNL

Abstract

Redox-active transition metal (TM) oxides, hydroxide and oxyhydroxides semiconductors typically posses wide p-d charge-transfer band gaps and exhibit poor charge carrier mobility. Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence that electron mobility within TM (oxyhydr)oxides is a crucial feature of their redox reactivity, affecting the rates of interfacial reactions, outcomes of redox-driven phase transformations and enabling charge transfer between reactions occurring at widely-separated surface sites 1,2. In order to determine the links between crystal structure and charge transport efficiency on solid-phase redox reactivity we have applied a pump-probe method to observe directly the fate of electrons introduced into ferric iron (oxyhydr)oxide nanoparticles via ultrafast interfacial electron transfer3. Time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy observes the formation of reduced and structurally distorted metal sites consistent with small polarons. By tracking the lifetime of the reduced metal states, rate constants for thermally-activated cation-to-cation electron hopping in the solid can be measured with subnanosecond accuracy. Comparisons between different phases revealed that short-range structural topology, not long-range order, dominates the electron-hopping rate, and shed new insight into the structure and properties of the naturally-formed nanomaterial, ferrihydrite4. Lattice Monte Carlo simulations revealed that, on timescales relevant to solid-phase reactions, surface charge plays a commanding role in biasing electron conduction trajectories.