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 ZrO 2 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 ZrO 2 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 ZrO 2 phases. And the grain sizes of monoclinic and tetragonal phases in the ZrO 2 films were 5–16   nm and 10–18   nm, respectively. In addition, the thin films of Y 2 O 3 -stabilized ZrO 2 (YSZ), La 2 Zr 2 O 7 , and the multilayer thin films of La 2 Zr 2 O 7 /YSZ were also fabricated by the PASD method.