Fig. 3

TEM study of the YAG-Al₂O₃ ceramic nanostructure. a STEM-HAADF image of the YAG-Al₂O₃ ceramic showing an interconnected 3-D network of the YAG crystals (bright phase) separated by Al₂O₃ areas (dark phase). The scale bar corresponds to 50 nm. b HRTEM micrograph of the same YAG-Al₂O₃ ceramic showing a typical coalescence neck between two particles (YAG 1 and YAG 2) oriented along the \(\left[ {3\bar 51} \right]\) and the \(\left[ {\bar 142} \right]\) zones axes respectively (scale bar corresponds to 10 nm). The micrograph and the FFT patterns embedded show that the \(\left( {21\bar 1} \right)\) plans of the two grains are almost parallel (small rotation deviation of 6°). STEM-EDX cationic c composition profile and d elemental maps showing that the bright phase observed by STEM-HAADF (scale bar corresponds to 25 nm) can be assigned to YAG and the dark phase to Al₂O₃