Crystallographic characteristics of grain boundaries in dense yttria-stabilized zirconia

Grain-boundary plane, misorientation angle, grain size, and grain-boundary energy distributions were quantified using electron backscatter diffraction data for dense polycrystalline yttria-stabilized zirconia, to understand interfacial crystallography in solid oxide fuel cells. Tape-cast samples were sintered at 1450°C for 4 h and annealed for at least 100 h between 800°C and 1650°C. Distributions obtained from both three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions and stereological analyses of 2D sections demonstrated that the (100) boundary planes {(111)} have relative areas larger {smaller} than expected in a random distribution, and that the boundary plane distribution is inversely correlated to the boundary energy distribution.