Aging Behavior of Yttria Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) in Non Aqueous Suspensions for Electrophoretic Deposition Application

In this research aging behaviors of yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) in non aqueous suspensions, namely ethanol, isopropanol, n-propanol, acetylacetone and the mixture of ethanol-acetylacetone were investigated. For this purpose, electrical conductivity, electrophoretic mobility and suspension stability during aging time (6 to 7 days) were evaluated. Except for the ethanol-acetyl acetone mixture, each suspension contained 0 to 0.8 g/L iodine. It was revealed that, the alcoholic suspensions indicated lower conductivity in comparison with acetylacetone suspensions. However, acetylacetone suspension showed lower conductivity variation with time. Although iodine could improve the electrophoretic mobility of ethanol and acetylacetone suspensions, it had little effect on electrophoretic mobility of isopropanol and n-propanol suspensions. Also, it was indicated that iodine as a dispersant was not helpful for alcoholic suspensions stability. It was concluded that the mixture of acetylacetone-ethanol suspension was the best candidate in this study for electrophoretic deposition of YSZ, owing to its little behavior variation with the aging time, low conductivity and high electrophoretic mobility. High quality crack-free layers were electrophoretically deposited from this suspension on the substrate by applying 50 V/cm electrical field.