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Grain growth resistant nanocrystalline zirconia by targeting zero grain boundary energies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Sanchita Dey ,
Chi-Hsiu Chang ,
Mingming Gong ,
Feng Liu  and
Ricardo H.R. Castro
Sanchita Dey
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & NEAT ORU, University of California - Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA
Chi-Hsiu Chang
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & NEAT ORU, University of California - Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA
Mingming Gong
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & NEAT ORU, University of California - Davis, Davis, California, USA; and State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710072, People's Republic of China
Feng Liu
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710072, People's Republic of China
Ricardo H.R. Castro*
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & NEAT ORU, University of California - Davis, Davis, California, USA
*
a)Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: rhrcastro@ucdavis.edu
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Abstract

Nanocrystalline ceramics offer interesting and useful physical properties attributed to their inherent large volume fraction of grain boundaries. At the same time, these materials are highly unstable, being subjected to severe coarsening when exposed at moderate to high temperatures, limiting operating temperatures and disabling processing conditions. In this work, we designed highly stable nanocrystalline yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) by targeting a decrease of average grain boundary (GB) energy, affecting both driving force for growth and mobility of the boundaries. The design was based on fundamental equations governing thermodynamics of nanocrystals, and enabled the selection of lanthanum as an effective dopant which segregates to grain boundaries and lowers the average energy of YSZ boundaries to half. While this would be already responsible for significant coarsening reduction, we further experimentally demonstrate that the GB energy decreases continuously during grain growth caused by the enrichment of boundaries with dopant, enhancing further the stability of the boundaries. The designed composition showed impressive resistance to grain growth at 1100 °C as compared to the undoped YSZ and opens the perspective for similar design in other ceramics.

Keywords

ceramicoxidegrain boundaries
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Materials Research , Volume 30 , Issue 20 , 28 October 2015 , pp. 2991 - 3002
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2015 

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