Effects of grinding-induced grain boundary and interfaces on electrical transportation and structure phase transition in ZnSe under high pressure

Interface and scale effects are the two most important factors which strongly affect the structure and the properties of nano-/micro-crystals under pressure. We conduct an experiment under high pressure in situ alternating current impedance to elucidate the effects of interface on the structure and electrical transport behavior of two ZnSe samples with different sizes obtained by physical grinding. The results show that (i) two different-sized ZnSe samples undergo the same phase transitions from zinc blend to cinnabar-type phase and then to rock salt phase; (ii) the structural transition pressure of the 859-nm ZnSe sample is higher than that of the sample of 478 nm, which indicates the strong scale effect. The pressure induced boundary resistance change is obtained by fitting the impedance spectrum, which shows that the boundary conduction dominates the electrical transport behavior of ZnSe in the whole experimental pressure range. By comparing the impedance spectra of two different-sized ZnSe samples at high pressure, we find that the resistance of the 478-nm ZnSe sample is lower than that of the 859-nm sample, which illustrates that the sample with smaller particle size has more defects which are due to physical grinding.