Nanostructured zirconia prepared with commercial powder

GUSTAVO SUÁREZ; TOHRU S SUZUKI; TETSUO UCHIKOSHI; YOSHIO SAKKA

Nagoya, Japan

Congreso; IUMRS-ICA 2008. International Union of Materials Research Society- International Conference in Asia 2008; 2008

Zirconia materials were widely studied for many years because of the many possibilities for a variety of applications. In the tetragonal form, as a structure material, it was considered "the ceramics steel". It can also be used as an ionic conductor in the cubic structure doped with Yttria or Scandia. And can be used as an oxygen storage if it is doped with Ceria. Zirconia ceramics are still under research and many of their properties like superplasticity, transparency, hardness or electrical conductivity are being improved. For all this achievements it is very important to have a good control in the microstructure in the level of nano scale. One of today’s most challenging goals in the ceramic science is the fabrication of large bodies suitable to be tested in large scale. For this reason it is very important to be able to produce nano ceramics trough the processing of commercial powders. The key and the most remarkable point of this work is the colloidal processing of a mixture of 97mol% of monoclinic zirconia with 3 mol% of Yttria. Beads milling is dispersion equipment which works as an attrition milling with the rotation speed of 4000 RPM and the grinding media is zirconia balls with an average diameter size of 50 microns. The ZrO2(m) commercial powder as receive is 60 nm size of primary particle size. After the dispersion the particle size analysis show an average particle size of 90 nm. The slip casting process of the slurry lead to a very well dense green compact that can be reacted and sintered by different pressurless sintering technique and SPS method giving a final result of full dense tetragonal zirconia ceramics sintered at low temperature with a final grain size not bigger than 100 nm. This novel nanostructure ceramics obtained from a commercial powder is expected to improve different properties for many applications. The slip casting process of the slurry lead to a very well dense green compact that can be reacted and sintered by different pressurless sintering technique and SPS method giving a final result of full dense tetragonal zirconia ceramics sintered at low temperature with a final grain size not bigger than 100 nm. This novel nanostructure ceramics obtained from a commercial powder is expected to improve different properties for many applications.