Oxygen ion dynamics in yttria-stabilized zirconia as evaluated by solid-state 17O NMR spectroscopy

Solid-state ¹⁷O NMR measurements between room temperature and 973 K were performed for the first time on ¹⁷O-enriched yttria-stabilized zirconia samples. Spin–lattice relaxation is found to exhibit a strong temperature dependence which can be traced back to motional displacements of the oxygen ions and which is almost unaffected by the actual sample constitution. Analysis of the spin–lattice relaxation data provides the motional correlation times. The derived activation energies are relatively low with values of about 30 kJ/mol. In addition, large temperature effects are observed for the ¹⁷O NMR line widths, and thus for spin–spin relaxation, which are again attributed to the oxygen ion mobility. In this case, the underlying oxygen motions, however, occur on a length-scale which is different from that probed by spin–lattice relaxation.