Study of the mechanical properties and toughening mechanism of ZrO2 particles toughened Si3N4 ceramics

Abstract

Si3N4 ceramic has excellent properties such as high temperature resistance, high hardness, and high thermal stability, but it has the disadvantages of high hardness and brittleness and difficulty in later processing. In this paper, ZrO2 was used as toughening phase, and ZrO2 toughened Si3N4 ceramics was prepared by injection molding. The effects of ZrO2 sintering temperature and content on the mechanical properties and fracture morphology were studied. Experiments show that when the ZrO2 content is 10 wt.% and the sintering temperature reaches 1650 °C, the bending strength and fracture toughness of Si3N4 ceramics reach the maximum at the same time, which are 767 MPa and 8.7 MPa·m1/2, respectively. The density is high. XRD analysis revealed that if the sintering temperature is too high, the ZrO2/Si3N4 system will generate a large number of ZrN impurity phases that cannot be phase-transformed, which ultimately affects the ceramic properties. According to fracture morphology, the toughening mechanism of ZrO2 is stress-induced phase transition.