Grain growth in strontium titanate in electric fields: The impact of space‐charge on the grain‐boundary mobility

This study investigates grain growth in the perovskite oxide strontium titanate in an electric field. The seeded polycrystal technique was chosen as it provides a sensitive and controlled setup to evaluate the impact of different parameters on grain growth due to the well-defined driving force for grain growth. Current blocking electrodes were used to prevent Joule heating. The results show faster grain growth, and thus, higher grain-boundary mobility at the negative electrode. It is argued that the electric field causes point-defect redistribution, resulting in a higher oxygen vacancy concentration at the negative electrode. The local oxygen vacancy concentration is suggested to affect the space-charge potential at the grain boundaries. A thermodynamic treatment of the grain-boundary potential at a grain boundary without field shows that for a high oxygen vacancy concentration less space-charge and less accumulation of cationic defects to the boundary occurs. Therefore, at the negative electrode, a higher oxygen vacancy concentration results in less space-charge and less accumulation of cationic defects. The lower degree of defect accumulation requires less diffusion of segregated defects during grain-boundary migration, so that at the negative electrode faster grain growth is expected, as found in the experiments.