Spark Plasma Sintering of RareEarth Metals Doped Ceria

Spark Plasma Sintering of Rare-Earth Metals Doped Ceria Lia Stanciu, School of Materials Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907 Spark Plasma Sintering: The novel sintering method that we used, which applies an electrical field, high heating rate and short holding times at the maximum sintering temperature to densify, while preserving a fine grain size, the lanthanide-doped ceria ceramics. We aim investigate the behavior of doped ceria materials upon SPS sintering at 1100 and 1200 degrees Celsius. Schematic of the SPS set up SEM images of the SPS sintered lanthanide doped Ce. O 2 Impedance spectra for the M 3+-Ce. O 2 samples, SPS sintered at 1100°C; (left) measurement temperature = 290°C; (right) measurement temperature = 250°C Nanometric powders of ceria doped with 20 at% of three different rare earth metals (Sm, Gd, Yb) were synthesized by a solution method and subsequently sintered by SPS at 1100 and 1200°C. The particle sizes of the precursor powders were 26. 4 (SDC), 19. 3 (YDC) and 31. 4 nm (GDC), respectively. The grain sizes of the samples SPS sintered at 1100°C registered a three to five fold increase relative to the precursor powders. When the SPS sintering temperature was increased to 1200°C, the grain growth was enhanced to an 8 -19 fold increase relative to the precursor powder.