Iodine-stabilized YSZ suspensions

Suspension-based deposition techniques are dependent on the stability of the suspension for producing high-quality films. In this paper, iodine was shown to stabilize YSZ suspensions. The addition of iodine into YSZ suspensions increases the zeta potential to higher and more positive values and reduces the agglomeration of particles. The surface morphology of as-deposited film fabricated using suspension with iodine shows a uniform and fully covered substrate with smaller particle size compared to the deposit from a suspension without iodine which shows larger agglomerated particles with size greater than 2 µm. Further studies in heat treatment can employ optimized as-deposited films as a template for oriented superconducting films.