Improved Microstructure and Hardness Properties of Low-Temperature Microwave-Sintered Y₂O₃ Stabilized ZrO₂ Ceramics with Additions of Nano TiO₂ Powders

• Main Authors: Min-Hang Weng, Cheng-Xun Lin, Cian-Song Huang, Chin-Yi Tsai, Ru-Yuan Yang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-03-01
• Series: Materials
• Subjects: zirconia; microstructure; Vickers hardness; microwave sintering
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/13/7/1546

This paper reports the improvement of microstructural and hardness properties of 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (3Y-TZP) ceramics with nano TiO₂ powders (with 0, 0.9, 1.8, and 2.7 wt%) added using a low-temperature microwave-assisted sintering of 1250 °C. Even at such a low sintering temperature, all sintered samples had the main phase of tetragonal zirconia (t-ZrO₂) without the appearance of the secondary monoclinic phase or TiO₂ phase, and had high relative densities, larger than 95%. The grain growth was well developed, and the grain sizes were around 300–600 nm. The Ti and O elements appeared at the grain and grain boundary and increased with the increased nano TiO₂ contents identified by the element analysis, although the TiO₂ phase did not appear in the X-ray pattern. The Vickers hardness was in the range of 10.5 to 14.5 GPa, which first increased with increasing content till 0.9 wt% and then decreased. With citric acid corrosion treatment for 10 h, the Vickers hardness only decreased from 14.34 GPa to 13.55 GPa with the addition of 0.9 wt% nano TiO₂ powder. The experiment results showed that 0.9 wt% nano TiO₂ addition can improve the densification as well as the Vickers hardness under a low temperature of microwave-assisted sintering.