Microstructural dependence of electrical conductivity of (ZrO2)0.90–(Y2O3)0.04–(CaO)0.06 solid electrolyte

Mixed CaO/Y2O3-stabilized ZrO2 electrolytes were fabricated by different processing procedures and the microstructural dependence of electrical conductivity of the resultant samples was analyzed. It was found that, for the normally sintered samples, the conductivity increases with increasing relative density. Compared with the normally sintered samples, the microwave sintered sample possesses a much smaller grain structure, which results in a more significant grain-boundary effect on and a slight decrease in the conductivity. Since the mechanical properties of the electrolytes may be expected to be enhanced by microwave sintering, it was suggested that microwave sintering might be an effective way to fabricate the electrolytes in the promising system ZrO2–Y2O3–CaO.