Twin step synthesis of lanthanum zirconate through transferred arc plasma processing

Abstract

Low power transferred arc plasma (TAP) processing is a simple and cost-effective method for large amount of ceramic processing in a very short period of time duration. In the present work, lanthanum zirconate (La 2Zr2O7) was synthesized by transferred arc plasma (TAP) melting technique followed by mechanical milling. The mixture of La2O3 and ZrO2 powders with 1:2 mole ratio were ball milled for four hours and melted for three minutes in transferred arc plasma torch at 10 kW input power with 10 lpm of argon flow rate. The phase and microstructure formation of the processed samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.