Preparation of NiO-YSZ Substrate for Electrophoretic Deposition of Thin YSZ Film

In this report, a strategic approach for preparation of dense 8YSZ electrolyte layer on porous NiO-YSZ substrate was proposed. Porosity in the substrate was introduced by mixing corn starch with the starting NiO-YSZ powder. By varying the content of corn starch, porosity and sintering shrinkage of the sintered substrates were studied. The porous substrates were deposited with an electrolyte layer using the Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) technique. The difference in total sintering shrinkage between the substrate and that of YSZ electrolyte layer was found to be the major cause of cracks and pores in the electrolyte films. Finally, by optimizing the preparation conditions of the porous NiO-YSZ substrates, a dense YSZ film as thin as 2 μm was successfully fabricated.