One standard description of sodium-rich NaCl is removal of lattice chloride into a NaCl reservoir, leaving a positively charged chloride vacancy and an electron:
This Kröger–Vink notation equation conserves atoms, chloride sites and effective charge. The electron can be trapped in the vacancy, forming an electrically neutral F center:
Thus sodium excess introduces electronic defects and can give coloration. It does not imply that every added electron is a mobile conduction electron: electronic transport depends on trapping and thermal release. Chloride vacancies can also assist anion transport. An alternative microscopic incorporation route is a sodium interstitial plus an electron, but the vacancy–electron model describes the usual alkali-metal-colored halide.
The oxygen-pressure exponents can be explained by a change in the dominant charge state of metal vacancies, with holes carrying the p-type current. For a divalent metal oxide, a doubly negative metal vacancy is in Kröger–Vink notation. A conventional oxygen-incorporation reaction is
Treating regular oxygen-site activity as constant, the law of mass action gives . If these are the compensating defects, charge neutrality gives , hence and , assuming nearly constant hole mobility.
For singly negative vacancies, use
Now and , so . The charge-state equilibrium gives : the singly charged fraction can therefore dominate as oxygen pressure and hole concentration increase. This is a consistent dilute-defect model, not a unique experimental identification of every defect. Changes in mobility, defect association or other compensating defects require independent tests.