Doped and oxygen deficient ceria exhibits local bonding patterns that deviate from the average fluorite symmetry found in XRD.

Freezing Supercool Water: Under equilibrium conditions, water will freeze at 0°C, but, under certain conditions, it can be kept in a supercooled liquid form below this temperature. Ehre et al. (p. 672 ) present a careful and detailed study of the freezing of water drops on both positively and negatively charged pyroelectric surfaces using a combination of optical microscopy and x-ray diffraction: Supercooled water froze at different temperatures, depending on the charge of the substrate with the initial freezing occurring at the liquid-substrate interface on a positively charged substrate and at the air-water interface on a negatively charged substrate. Thus, freezing could be induced upon heating when the substrate charge also changed from negative to positive.

The conversion of to CO by electrolysis of molten was investigated. Using a cell comprising a Ti cathode, a graphite anode and a source of allows the continuous electrolysis of the melt at with current densities at the electrodes higher than . The faradaic efficiency of the process is close to 100%, and the thermodynamic efficiency at is . The proposed method has several advantages: (i) No precious metal is required, (ii) no hazardous or toxic by-products are produced, and (iii) the method may operate continuously, producing pure CO rather than a mixture of CO and . Therefore, the process described here has a potential application for converting electrical energy into fuel.

The characterization of pyroelectric materials is a necessary stage in the design of a large variety of pyroelectric-based devices ranging from intrusion alarms to IR cameras. The sample configurations and measurement techniques currently in use vary widely and require careful attention in order to avoid artifacts. In this review, we provide a practical guide to the measurement of the pyroelectric coefficient, paying particular attention to the new instrumental possibilities (fast sinusoidally modulated light sources, low impedance broad band current meters, and fast averaging oscilloscopes) that have become available during the last decade. Techniques applicable to bulk specimens, substrate-supported films, and self-supported films are described in detail. The most commonly used procedures are classified according to the type of thermal excitation: continuous ramping, heat pulse, and continuous oscillation. In the appendices, we describe the practical realization of these measurement schemes and provide mathematical descriptions for the extraction of the pyroelectric coefficient from the measured data.