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The species and ion charge state evolution of pulsed cathodic arc plasma was investigated at different pressures. A zirconium cathode was operated in a nitrogen environment, and the plasma composition was analyzed by time-of-flight charge-to-mass spectrometry.

Several molecular dynamics studies are conducted to explain the tensile behavior that is exhibited by the different monoclinic Zr[O.sub.2] bicrystals. The tensile strength of these bicrystals is shown to be inversely related to the thickness of its grain boundary.

Pulsed dc magnetron sputtering from a Zr-Y (80/20 at. %) alloy target was utilized to synthesize thermally stable, stoichiometric, cubic yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thin-film electrolytes. Temperature-dependent impedance spectroscopy analysis of the YSZ films with Ag electrodes showed that the in-plane ionic conductivity was within one order of magnitude higher in films deposited with substrate bias corresponding to a decrease in grain size compared to films deposited at floating potential.

A study related to the additions of Zr to In2O3 (IO) and In2O3:SnO2 (ITO) sputtered thin films that allowed IO-based films to maintain optical transparency and high carrier concentration is presented. Analysis of films using Drude theory approximation indicated that the optical improvement is due to an increase in dielectric permittivity caused by Zr addition, and this strategy could also be applied to improve and develop other new transparent conducting oxides (TCOs).

Large-scale atomic/molecular massively parallel simulator (LAMMPS) is used for studying the liquid behaviors of [Cu.sub.61.8][Zr.sub.38.2], [Cu.sub.64.5][Zr.sub.35.5] and [Cu.sub.66][Zr.sub.34] amorphous alloys including their pair distribution functions, distributions of Voronoi clusters with different coordination numbers and mean square displacement of Cu and Zr atoms. The local cluster structure has shown that the majority of the glue atoms are Cu atoms in [Cu.sub.64.5][Zr.sub.35.5] amorphous alloy, leading to denser packing and better glass forming ability.

A study of the damage production in yttria-stabilized cubic zirconia single crystals irradiated with swift heavy ions is presented. The damage results from the formation of tracks due to the huge electronic excitations induced in the wake of incident ions might be usd to predict the damage evolution in other nonamorphizable ceramics irradiated with swift heavy ions.

Amorphous hafnia, zirconia, and hafnia-zirconia nanoparticles are prepared by combining aqueous solutions of hexamethylenetetramine (HMT) with hafnium dichloride oxide, zirconium dichloride oxide or a mixture of these two salts at room temperature. Nanoparticles of tetragonal and monoclinic structure are prepared by increasing the annealing temperature and/or using a less reducing environment.

The theoretical and experimental studies on the very intense visible green photoluminescence (PL) observed in structurally ordered-disordered BaZr[O.sub.3] powders at room temperature are reported. The results showed that local defects in the cubic structure caused by [Zr[O.sub.5].[V.sup.z.sub.O] complex clusters play significant role in the formation of the hole-electron pairs, that gives rise to a charge gradient in the structure responsible for PL emission.