Fabrication and characterization of tetragonal yttria-stabilized zirconia single-crystalline thin film

Tetragonal yttria-stabilized zirconia thin film was successfully fabricated by a pulsed laser deposition method. The thin film grew heteroepitaxially with the orientation relationship of ZrO₂‖Al₂O₃. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy mapping revealed that Y³⁺ ions were distributed homogeneously without local segregations. X-ray and electron-diffraction analysis confirmed a single crystalline structural feature of the film. On the other hand, high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy observations show that this film contains small-angle tilt grain boundaries, which is composed of the periodic array of dislocations with the Burgers vector .