Temperature and RE elemental dependence for ZrO2–RE2O3 oxide film growth by IBAD method

Biaxially aligned growth was studied by dual-ion-beam sputtering method for ZrO 2 –RE 2 O 3 oxide films on polycrystalline Ni-based alloy substrates. Cube-textured (all axes aligned with a 〈1 0 0〉 axis substrate normal) films were obtained by low energy (∼200 eV) Ar + ion bombardment. The optimized growth temperature increased with the richer combined ratio for RE 2 O 3 . Several pyrochlore type oxides (RE 2 Zr 2 O 7 ) were found to have sharp textures at the optimized temperatures of 200 °C. The most sharply textured films were obtained for Gd 2 Zr 2 O 7 and Eu 2 Zr 2 O 7 . The time constant of texture evolution was about half compared to yttria-stabilized-zirconia. The texture sharpness degrades with the ion radius of rare-earth elements being apart from the ones for Gd, Eu.