INFLUENCE OF ADDITION OF RARE EARTH ELEMENTS ON THERMAL BARRIER COATINGS MICRO STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION
Decreasing thermal diffusivity of YSZ can increase the thermal barrier effect. Thermal diffusivity is in direct proportion to lattice oscillation amplitude and frequency. The addition of rare earth oxide into YSZ may induce the lattice distortion, which will result in the change of lattice oscillation frequency. In the present work, combined with the experiment, a theoretical study was proposed to investigate the effect of the rare earth elements on the thermal barrier effect of YSZ using first-principal calculations implemented CASTEP program. It has been found that the addition of the rear earth element can make larger lattice distortion and favorable to reduce the thermal conductivity. The calculation results are in agreement with our experimental results.