Change of the stoichiometry and electrocoloration due to the injection of Li and O ions into lithium niobate crystals

Congruently grown LiNbO₃ single crystals show both high oxygen and lithium ion conductivity at temperatures above 500 °C. The high oxygen ion conductivity can be understood in terms of a certain amount of oxygen vacancies already present in congruently grown LiNbO₃ single crystals. Thermal treatment of LiNbO₃ produces additional oxygen vacancies. The absorption bands introduced by this procedure are investigated. It is found that the electrons which are generated during the reduction process are homogeneously distributed among all oxygen vacancies in the LiNbO₃ single crystals. The electrocoloration phenomenon in LiNbO₃ single crystals is due to the process of injection of lithium ions and electrons into LiNbO₃ by a double charge mechanism. Investigations of the optical and electrical properties of electrocolored LiNbO₃ crystals are reported. It is shown that the absorption spectra of thermally and electrochemically reduced samples are identical and that the origin of the absorption processes has to be therefore the same in both cases. That means, additional electrons produced by the double charge injection of lithium ions and electrons are also homogeneously distributed among the oxygen vacancies. This supports our hypothesis that a certain amount of oxygen vacancies has to be present already in as-grown LiNbO₃ single crystals.