Abstract

An in-depth understanding of the structure – property relationships is essential for the successful discovery and preparation of new functional materials capable of overcoming the limitations of the currently used ones. As materials’ complexity increases, structural characterisation using a range of scattering-based and complementary techniques and state-of-the-art data analysis approaches, aided by computational simulations, is essential in providing this insight. This presentation will give an overview of our recent work on oxide ion conductors: the elucidation of key design principles, defects and mechanisms giving rise to ionic mobility; the development and use of advanced structural data analysis methodologies capable of tackling exceptionally complex crystallographic problems arising from phase transitions; the complementary use of long-range and local structural probes in understanding the structure, properties, disorder and dynamics.