Thermodynamic properties of the Gd2O3-Y2O3-HfO2 system studied by high temperature Knudsen effusion mass spectrometry and optimized using the Barker lattice theory

The vaporization processes and thermodynamic properties of twenty samples in the Gd2O3-Y2O3-HfO2 system in a wide concentration range were studied by high-temperature Knudsen effusion mass spectrometry. At the temperature 2500 K the main vapor species were GdO, YO, and O. From the measured values of their partial pressures activities of the Gd2O3 and Y2O3 as functions of concentration were determined. The HfO2 activity was calculated by the Gibbs-Duhem integration. The resulting excess Gibbs energy function exhibited negative deviations from ideal behavior. For the optimization of the obtained thermodynamic functions of the ternary Gd2O3-Y2O3-HfO2 system the generalized Barker-Guggenheim theory of associated solutions was applied. In an alternative computing procedure the same model was used, but the optimization was based on the available literature data for the corresponding binary Gd2O3-Y2O3, Gd2O3-HfO2, and Y2O3-HfO2 systems. Thus, the Barker lattice model may be used for estimation of the thermodynamic functions of a ternary system on the basis of the data for the corresponding binary sub-systems.