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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 102 » Issue 7
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 075506 (2009) [4 pages]

Proton Tunneling: A Decay Channel of the O-H Stretch Mode in KTaO3

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E. J. Spahr1, L. Wen2, M. Stavola2, L. A. Boatner3, L. C. Feldman4,5, N. H. Tolk5, and G. Lüpke1
1Department of Applied Science, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187, USA
2Department of Physics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015, USA
3Solid State Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830, USA
4Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, The State University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA
5Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA

Received 23 October 2008; published 20 February 2009

The vibrational lifetimes of the O-H and O-D stretch modes in the perovskite oxide KTaO3 are measured by pump-probe infrared spectroscopy. Both stretch modes are exceptionally long lived and exhibit a large “reverse” isotope effect, due to a phonon-assisted proton-tunneling process, which involves the O-Ta-O bending motion. The excited-state tunneling rate is found to be 7 orders of magnitude larger than from the ground state in the proton conducting oxide, BaCeO3 [ Phys. Rev. B 60 R3713 (1999)].

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.075506
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.075506
PACS:
63.20.Pw, 66.35.+a, 78.47.−p
 
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