Combustion Chemical Vapor Deposition of YSZ Thin Films for Fuel Cell Applications

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is well recognized as the most effective technique to prepare high-quality thin solid films. This technique can be classified into two categories according to the working pressure, i.e. low to very low pressure and high pressure CVD. In this paper, the high pressure CVD technique is interested to the authors. An atmospheric combustion chemical vapor deposition (ACCVD) system has been developed for yttria fully stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thin film processing. Various processing parameters, such as the ratio of oxygen to liquid fuel in flame, the concentration of metal reagents in the solution, the temperature of the substrate, and so on, have been investigated. The as-grown films are characterized with x-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Within the range of experimental parameters, the phase of the film is predominately cubic one. It was shown that the phase and crystallinity of the films are strongly dependent upon the experimental variable.