The 8 wt.% yttria-stabilized zirconia (8YSZ) thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are widely used to protect hot superalloy components of gas turbine and jet engine. However, Cracks and pores in the 8YSZ coating would accelerate the oxidation of the bondcoat alloy and the corrosion of 8YSZ topcoat by molten salts and finally result in permanent failure of the TBCs. Hence, in this work, a sol-gel spin-coating method was employed to prepare a dense α-Al2O3 film on the surface of air-plasma-sprayed 8YSZ coatings, in order to block the paths of cracks and pores while keeping the stress tolerance of 8YSZ coatings. The influences of the polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and alumina content of the sol on the microstructure of the α-Al2O3 film were investigated. It is found that a sol with PVP addition amount of 50 mg/mL and alumina solid content of 10% let to the achievement of a compact α-Al2O3 film. The positive results in this work would inspire more efforts to prepare dense films on TBCs and therefore improve their performance under service conditions.

Air-plasma-sprayed (APS) thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) were oxidized in air at different temperatures for 1000h and sequentially investigated by impedance spectroscopy (IS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). After oxidation at temperatures higher than 900°C, a thermally grown oxide (TGO) layer was formed at the bond coat/topcoat interface in TBCs. The impedance spectra of oxidized TBCs typically contains two relaxation processes that stem from the yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) topcoat of TBCs and the TGO layer. The TGO resistivity that obtained by simulating the impedance spectra increased with the increasing of annealing temperature, demonstrating the growth and the densification of TGO layer.