Structural and Corrosive Properties of ZrO2 Thin Films on Zircaloy-4 by RF Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Zirconium-oxide (ZrO2) thin films as protective layers were grown on a Zircaloy-4 (Z-4) cladding material as a substrate by RF reactive magnetron sputtering at room temperature. To investigate the effect of plasma immersion on the structural and the corrosive properties of the as-grown ZrO2 thin film, we immersed Z-4 in plasma during the deposition process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements showed that the as-grown ZrO2 thin films immersed in plasma had cubic, well as monoclinic and tetragonal, phases whereas those immersed in the plasma had monoclinic and tetragonal phases only. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements of the surface morphology showed that the surface roughness of the as-grown ZrO2 thin films immersed in plasma was larger than that of the films not immersed in plasma. In addition, the corrosive property of the as-grown ZrO2 thin films immersed in the plasma was characterized using the weight gains of Z-4 after the corrosion test. Compared with the non-immersed films, the weight gains of the immersed films were larger. These results indicate that the ZrO2 films immersed in plasma cannot protect Z-4 from corrosive phenomena.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 R. A. Miller, "Adances in Ceramics edited by A. H. Heuer in Scienceand Techonology of Zircona" 3 9 : 241-, 1981