Influence of Sintering Conditions on Anisotropy of Grain Boundary Networks and Microstructure Topology in Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia

Abstract

The paper presents original data of 3D EBSD orientation maps collected for 13 Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia (YSG) samples, sintered at different temperatures for different times. The largest map contains 18,833 grains and 64,506 grain boundaries. These data allowed for the analysis of grain boundary networks, based on all 5 macroscopic parameters and some topological studies of microstructures. Grain boundaries having the (001) and (111) boundary planes are favored and disfavored respectfully in all YSZ samples. The anisotropy appears to be stronger if grains are larger. However, large grains themselves do not imply strong anisotropy. Symmetric boundaries are slightly more frequent in YSZ compared to random boundaries, but despite some premises, the evidence for over-representation of 180 deg-tilt boundaries is still too weak. Distributions of the number of faces per grain and mean number of faces per grain are similar to those reported for metals, and there is a close-to-linear correlation between the number of faces and grain size.