A study of grain-boundary structure in rare-earth doped aluminas using an EBSD technique

Oversized rare-earth dopant ions such as Y3+, Nd3+, and La3+ segregate to grain boundaries and reduce the tensile creep rate of alpha -Al2O3 by 2-3 orders of magnitude. It has been speculated that these dopant ions can modify the grain boundary structure in alumina by promoting the formation of special grain boundaries. If this were indeed the case, it would provide a possible explanation for the aforementioned creep rate retardation. In order to test this hypothesis, electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) has been used to assess both the proportion of coincidence-site lattice boundaries, and the grain boundary misorientation distribution, in aluminas doped with various ions (Zr, Y, Nd, La, Nd/Zr). The results show that the grain boundary structure in alumina is not significantly altered by the addition of the above dopants, implying that the change in grain boundary chemistry is primarily responsible for the observed creep behavior. (C) 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.