Novel fabrication of high-quality zirconia ceramic thin films by polyglycol-assisted spreading deposition

A polyglycol-assisted spreading deposition (PASD) method has been used to prepare the high-quality ZrO2 thin film on single crystalline Si (111) substrate. The structure and composition of the films were studied by SEM, XRD and UV Raman techniques. Characterization results indicated that the ZrO2 films were composed of nano-sized small particles and have a crack-free, dense and homogeneous microstructure. After a heat treatment of 10 min at 700–900 °C, the films showed a mixture of monoclinic and tetragonal ZrO2 phases. And the grain sizes of monoclinic and tetragonal phases in the ZrO2 films were 5–16 nm and 10–18 nm, respectively. In addition, the thin films of Y2O3-stabilized ZrO2 (YSZ), La2Zr2O7, and the multilayer thin films of La2Zr2O7/YSZ were also fabricated by the PASD method.