Optical and structural study of EB-PVD ZrO2 thin films

The behaviour of the crystalline properties of ZrO2 films prepared by electron beam physical vapour deposition (EB-PVD) is investigated as a function of their deposition rates. In this paper, the conditions for the preparation of tetragonal zirconia from yttria stabilized zirconia and from monoclinic powder as starting materials are reported. The variation of the crystallite size as a function of the deposition rate is studied and, additionally, the optical characterization that permits to determine the refractive index is presented. The obtained values are in agreement with the bulk ones showing that EB-PVD prepared samples have good performance for optical and protective coatings.