Kinetics of grain growth in La-doped ultrapure Al2O3

•Grain growth was measured in La-doped ultrapure alumina over 1350 °C–1550 °C.•The evolution of grain size followed cubic growth kinetics.•An analytical explanation for cubic growth kinetics was proposed.•The activation energy of grain growth was 418 kJ/mol for La-doped alumina.•Boundary mobility was an order of magnitude lower than that of ultrapure alumina.

Kinetics of grain growth was measured in dense polycrystalline ultrapure alumina doped with 100 ppm of lanthanum. The evolution of grain size followed cubic kinetics, which can be attributed to the influence of solutes. Based on the increase of Gibbsian excess of segregating dopants with increase in the average grain size, it can be approximated that boundary velocity scales as inverse-square of grain size, leading to cubic grain growth kinetics. The activation energy of grain growth was found to be 418 ± 22 kJ mol−1 for La-doped alumina; comparable to that of undoped ultrapure alumina, and much lower than the activation energy of creep in La-doped alumina. The grain boundary mobility was found to be almost an order of magnitude lower than that of undoped ultrapure alumina, which can be attributed to the drag of oversized dopants segregated to the grain boundary core. These findings provide a basic understanding of the effects of segregating dopants on grain growth, and can be exploited in the production of coarsening resistant nanograined materials.

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