LOW TEMPERATURE CATHODE SUPPORTED ELECTROLYTES

Anderson, Harlan U. ; Huebner, Wayne ; Kosacki, Igor

University of Missouri (United States)

关键词: Optical Properties;    Grain Growth;    Cathodes;    Refractive Index;    36 Materials Science;   

DOI  :  10.2172/834064
RP-ID  :  NONE
RP-ID  :  AC26-99FT40710
RP-ID  :  834064

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

This project has three main goals: Thin Films Studies, Preparation of Graded Porous Substrates and Basic Electrical Characterization and testing of Planar Single Cells. During this time period substantial progress has been made in developing low temperature deposition techniques to produce dense, nanocrystalline yttrium-stabilized zirconia films on both dense oxide and polymer substrates. Microstructural changes in unsupported nanocrystalline yttrium stabilized zirconia (ZrO{sub 2}:16%Y, or YSZ) thin films were examined as a function of temperature and annealing time in order to determine the grain growth exponent and the mechanisms of pinhole formation. Grain growth and pinhole formation were measured using high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), normal imaging mode transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction, and energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDS). Grain growth was found to vary with a time exponent of about one half before pinhole formation and about one third after. Pinhole formation in 70 nm thick films occurred at temperatures near 600 C, corresponding to a grain size of about 15 nm, or a grain size to film thickness ration of approximately 0.25. The deposition of films on porous substrates is hampered by the penetration of the polymer precursor solution into the substrate whose pores as > 0.2 {micro}m, therefore much attention has to be paid to the development of porous colloidal oxide films onto surfaces. Thus during this line period we have been studying these films. Optical properties have proven to be an excellent way to study the quality of these nanoporous films. The influence of porosity and densification on optical properties of films on sapphire substrates that were prepared from water colloidal suspensions of small ({approx}5nm) particles of ceria was investigated. The colloidal ceria films have initially very porous structure (porosity about 50%) and densification starts at about 600 C accompanied by grain growth. The concurrence of these two processes makes it difficult to interpret the results of the optical spectrophotometry, but the combination of transmittance and reflectance measurements provides enough data to separate these two influences and to calculate the porosity, particle size and energy band gap separately. XRD, SEM, ellipsometry and mechanical profilometry were used to confirm the results obtained from the spectrophotometric measurements. All these methods gave results, which are in good agreement: the change in the porosity from 50% to 15% and the particle size increased from 5 to 65nm in the temperature region from 400 to 1000 C. An important result of the investigation is the fact that the main optical properties of the coating such as refractive index and band gap energy depend only on the porosity, but not on the grain size. The grain size influences the scattering properties of the coating, which allows the grain size to be estimated from optical measurements.