Formation and migration of vacancies in rubidium halides

Abstract

Energies of formation of Schottky defects as well as cation and anion migration energies in RbCl, RbBr and RbI have been evaluated from ionic lattice calculations and the results are compared with the corresponding values obtained from ionic conductivity measurements. The experimental and calculated values of Schottky formation energies agree. Conduction in rubidium halides is mainly due to the movement of cation vacancies. The calculated value of the cation migration energy in RbCl is close to that obtained experimentally, but the calculated values in RbBr and RbI are somewhat higher than the experimental values.