Texture and Nano Mechanical Properties of YSZ Electrolyte Thin Films Prepared by CCVD and PLD

Abstract

AbstractComposite thin films of yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) and alumina (Al2O3) have been synthesized using liquid fuel combustion chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) in the NSF Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures (CAMSS) at North Carolina A&T State University. With the CCVD technique, addition of alumina was realized by adding the designated amount of aluminum-organic in the reagent solution; while with PLD, doping of alumina in YSZ was accomplished by alternative ablations of an YSZ target and an alumina target. Variations in morphology, surface roughness and nano-mechanical properties of the composite thin films of Al2O3/YSZ were characterized. Crystal size of the films processed by CCVD was much larger than that processed by PLD; surface roughness follows the similar tendency. Upon high-temperature annealing, crystals in the PLD processed thin films grew up to 300 nm. The effect of Al2O3 in YSZ thin films on their nano-mechanical properties was dependent on the film deposition techniques in our research. For the films deposited by CCVD, addition of Al2O3 improved the nano hardness and elastic modulus of YSZ thin films, while a decline was observed in the mechanical properties of the films deposited by PLD.