Synthesis and characterization of proton conductive CaZr0.90In0.10O3−δ by a citric acid complexation method

A citric acid complexation method is applied to synthesize CaZr0.90In0.10O3−δ. TG-DSC, XRD, SEM, linear shrinkage and the complex impedance method are conducted to investigate the physical and protonic conduction properties of CaZr0.90In0.10O3−δ. The results show that the citrate method is a favorable way to produce high purity nano-CaZr0.90In0.10O3−δ powders suitable for fabricating dense ceramics at lower temperature. In addition, the protonic conduction tests indicate that the total, bulk and grain boundary conductivities of the ceramics are much higher than those of the ceramics fabricated from the powders synthesized by the conventional solid-state reaction method.