Effect of Titania Doping on Structural and Mechanical Properties of NiO/YSZ Anode Materials Sintered by Using Microwave Energy

The current article presents first-hand work on the synthesis of nickel oxide–titania-doped yttria-stabilized zirconia (NiO-YZT) composites of composition 0.40NiO-0.60{[(ZrO2)0.92(Y2O3)0.08]1−x(TiO2)x} with x = 0.00, 0.03, 0.06, 0.09, 0.12 and 0.15 using microwave processing. The composites are prepared by mixed oxide method by taking yttria (Y2O3), titania (TiO2) and monoclinic zirconia (ZrO2) in their stoichiometric ratio and sintered by using conventional and microwave processing techniques. The investigation of prepared composites has been carried out by x-ray diffractometer, scanning electron microscope and Vickers hardness technique to probe the crystal structure, microstructure and mechanical properties. Also, the results obtained are compared for both the conventionally and microwave-sintering routes. It was inferred that the microwave-sintered NiO-YZT showed better results than the conventional samples in terms of greater density, uniform microstructure and better microhardness.