Development and evaluation of suspension plasma sprayed yttria stabilized zirconia coatings as thermal barriers

The insulating effects from thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) in gas turbine engines allow for increased operational efficiencies and longer service lifetimes. Consequently, improving TBCs can lead to enhanced gas turbine engine performance. This study was conducted to investigate if yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) coatings, the standard industrial choice for TBCs, produced from nano-sized powder could provide better thermal insulation than current commericial YSZ coatings generated using micron-sized powders. The coatings for this research were made via the recently developed suspension plasma spraying (SPS) process. With SPS, powders are suspended in a solvent containing dispersing agents; the suspension is then injected directly into a plasma flow that evaporates the solvent and melts the powder while transporting it to the substrate. Although related to the industrial TBC production method of air plasma spraying (APS), SPS has two important differences—the ability to spray sub-micron diameter ceramic particles, and the ability to alloy the particles with chemicals dissolved in the solvent. These aspects of SPS were employed to generate a series of coatings from suspensions containing ∼100 nm diameter YSZ powder particles, some of which were alloyed with neodymium and ytterbium ions from the solvent. The SPS coatings contained columnar structures not observed in APS TBCs; thus, a theory was developed to explain the formation of these features. The thermal conductivity of the coatings was tested to evaluate the effects of these unique microstructures and the effects of the alloying process. The results for samples in the as-sprayed and heat-treated conditions were compared to conventional YSZ TBCs. This comparison showed that, relative to APS YSZ coatings, the unalloyed SPS samples typically exhibited higher as-sprayed and lower heat-treated thermal conductivities. All thermal conductivity values for the alloyed samples were lower than conventional YSZ TBCs. The different thermal conduction behaviors were linked to the porosity and compositional properties of the coatings using immersion density, SEM, and synchrotron radiation characterization techniques