Compressive creep behavior of spark plasma sintered La2O3–YSZ composite

The present paper describes compressive creep behavior of cubic 8 mol% yttria stabilized zirconia+10 mol% La2O3 (fabricated by Spark Plasma Sintering) in the temperature range of 1300–1330 °C at a stress level of 45–78 MPa in vacuum. The pre- and post-creep microstructures, relative magnitudes of the stress exponent (n=1.7–2.1) and the activation energy (540–580 kJ/mol) suggest that grain boundary sliding aided by inter-diffusion of La and Zr leading to the formation of pyrochlore La1.6Y0.4Zr2O7 phase at the grain boundaries during creep is the active creep mechanism in this composite.