Copper and silver selenide crystal growth rate measurements as a method for determination of ionic conductivity

The motivation behind this work is the discrepancy between the measured and calculated growth rates of copper selenide spherical single crystals between 740 and 800K. The growth of cylindrical polycrystalline samples of copper selenide at high temperatures was monitored in experiments that enabled full control of the geometry of growth. Together with the calculations based on Yokota's transport equation, these measurements eliminated ionic conductivity data as a possible reason behind too high values of the calculated growth rates. The equivalent growth experiments on polycrystalline silver selenide samples were performed as a test of the method, yielding excellent agreement with the results obtained by extrapolation of existing data. On the basis of these measurements and associated analysis, this method is proposed as a method for determination of ionic conductivity of mixed superionic conductors on temperatures up to the temperatures of melting, i.e. in the range in which other methods of ionic conductivity measurements either do not work or are not accurate enough.