Structural And Corrosive Properties Of Zro2 Thin Films Using N2o As A Reactive Gas By Rf Reactive Magnetron Sputtering

A Zr-O2 thin film as a corrosion protective layer was deposited on Zircaloy-4 (Z-4) clad material using N2O as a reactive gas by RF reactive magnetron sputtering at room temperature. The Z-4 substrate was located in plasma or out of plasma during the ZrO2 deposition process to investigate mechanical and corrosive properties for the plasma immersion. Tetragonal and monoclinic phases were existed in ZrO2 thin film immersed in plasma. We observed that a grain size of the ZrO2 thin film immersed in plasma state is larger than that of the ZrO2 thin film out of plasma state. In addition, the corrosive property of the ZrO2 thin films in the plasma was characterized using the weight gains of Z-4 after the corrosion test. Compared with the ZrO2 thin film immersed out of plasma, the weight gains of ZrO2 thin film immersed in plasma were larger. These results indicate that the ZrO2 film with the tetragonal phase in the ZrO2 can protect the Z-4 from corrosive phenomena.