Twin step synthesis of lanthanum zirconate through transferred arc plasma processing

Low power transferred arc plasma (TAP) processing is a simple and cost-effectivemethod for large amount of ceramic processing in a very short period of time duration. In thepresent work, lanthanum zirconate (La2Zr2O7) was synthesized by transferred arc plasma(TAP) melting technique followed by mechanical milling. The mixture of La2O3 and ZrO2powders with 1:2 mole ratio were ball milled for four hours and melted for three minutes intransferred arc plasma torch at 10 kW input power with 10 lpm of argon flow rate. The phaseand microstructure formation of the processed samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction(XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images.