Aging and composition dependence of electron diffraction patterns in Y2O3-stabilized ZrO2: Relationship between crystal structure and conductivity

Origin of the hump on the left shoulder of the X-ray diffraction peaks observed in Y2O3-fully and partially stabilized ZrO2

“…The result shows that the average crystal grain size after aging at 1273 K for 1000 h, which depends on the peak index, is about 31-49 nm. This value closely matches the results of the TEM analysis [36].…”

“…The results of such comparison show that the increases in the FWHM of peaks are not attributable to the overlapping of peaks following the precipitation of new phases but to the refinement of the grains. Results of TEM observations shown in the other paper confirmed this finding [36]. The peaks in the higher angles shown in Fig.…”

“…In contrast to results previously reported in the literature [11,16,17,39,43,44,46,50], it was concluded in other papers that aging-induced phase transformation is not the mechanism responsible for the decrease in conductivity with aging at lower temperatures. Only at higher temperatures does the consideration of phase transformation caused by aging become important [35][36][37].…”

“…As a result, whether the extraordinary phase reported previously, especially the rhombohedral phase [21,[25][26][27][28][29][30], exists is verified in detail. As for the electrochemical properties of stabilized zirconia as a solid electrolyte, there were two specific problems to be clarified from the standpoint of crystallography, before the reports by Kondoh et al [35][36][37]. One of these was the problem concerning the dopant concentration dependence of conductivity [38].…”

Aging strengthening of 8 mol% yttria-fully-stabilized zirconia

“…The ring and spot with extremely short radius that must be observed when superlattice reflections appear was not observed in this pattern at all. This result indicates that superlattice reflections disappear with aging, which indicates relaxation of the anisotropy in the lattice distortion due to a change in the local structure by aging [3,14].…”