Artículos SCI

The thermal stability of BiFeO3 prepared by mechanosynthesis and sintered at 850 °C has been studied by DSC as a function of the atmosphere and temperature. It has been found that neither the phase transitions nor the thermal stability of BiFeO3 is affected by the atmosphere in which the heating process is performed. The material is unstable above the α–β transition (TC) and slowly decomposes to produce Bi2O3 and Bi2Fe4O9. The kinetics of this slow process has been studied by performing heating–cooling DSC cycles, concluding it follows an Avrami–Erofeev nucleation and growth kinetic model. The β–γ transition and the peritectic decomposition of BiFeO3 overlap and are kinetically controlled. The kinetics of this complex process has been studied for the first time employing a new kinetic analysis procedure implying the deconvolution and subsequent analysis of the individual contributing stages. Thus, it has been demonstrated that the decomposition of BiFeO3 is accelerated when the sample is heated above the β–γ transition and both processes also follow Avrami–Erofeev kinetic models.

The shape and intensity of photoelectron peaks are strongly affected by extrinsic excitations due to electron transport out of the surface and by intrinsic excitations induced by the sudden creation of the static core hole. Besides, elastic electron scattering may also be important. These effects should be included in the theoretical description of the emitted photoelectron peaks. To investigate the importance of surface and core hole effects relative to elastic scattering effect, we have calculated full XPS spectra for the Cu 2p emissions of Cu and CuO with the simulation of electron spectra for surface analysis (SESSA) software and with a convolution procedure using the differential inelastic electron scattering cross-section obtained with the quantitative analysis of electron energy loss in XPS (QUEELS-XPS) software. Surface and core hole effects are included in QUEELS-XPS but absent in SESSA while elastic electron scattering effects are included in SESSA but absent in QUEELS-XPS. Our results show that the shape of the XPS spectra are strongly modified because of surface and core hole effects, especially for energy losses smaller than about 20eV.