Grain boundary analysis of Lu-doped Al2O3 by EDS and EELS

High-temperature mechanical property in ceramics is directly related to the atomic structure and the chemical bonding strength in the grain boundaries . Transmission electron microscopy is a powerful tool to characterize the g rain boundary structure. In this paper, the atomic structure and chemical b onding state at the grain boundaries in 0.05 mol%lu(2)O(3)-doped Al2O3 poly crystalline, which shows an excellent high-temperature creep resistance, wa s investigated by high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM), energy disper sive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), scanning transmission electron microscopy (S TEM) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). In addition, a first pri nciple molecular orbital calculation (MO) was made to examine the unoccupie d density of states and chemical bonding state at the grain boundary.