Effect of In Situ Formed Spinel Phase on the Mechanical Properties of Zirconia Ceramics

Abstract

The reaction-sintered zirconia-alumina and zirconia-spinel ceramics having low firing shrinkage were prepared from ZrO2(Ca-PSZ)/Al and ZrO2(Baddellyite)/MgAl powder mixtures via the attrition milling and the effect of the characteristics of used raw powders was investigated. Flaky Al powders mixed with coarse Ca-PSZ powders was not effectively comminuted due to lower hardness of zirconia powders. So by using the alumina ball media or coarse Al2O3 powders rather than Al, the milling efficiency could be much more increased. When fused Ca-PSZ powder was reaction-sintered with Al at 1550 for 3 hours, the reaction-sintering and densification were somewhat difficult because the Ca-PSZ/Al powder mixture was not effectively comminuted. And the Ca ion in Ca-PSZ grains diffused into alumina grains during sintering so that the unstabilization of Ca-PSZ body was occurred which gave the cracks in the specimens. But when MgAl alloy powder was added to monoclinic zirconia, Mg and Al became to oxide at first and subsequently converted to spinel(MgAl2O4) during heating and finally unreacted MgO seemed to stabilize the zirconia. The oxides which formed at the oxidation process would have very fine grain size so that the reaction sintering was more effective to densification and homogeneous microstructure. The mechanical properties of reaction-sintered stabilized zirconia/spinel composite were better than only MgO stabilized zirconia. Sintering behavior in reaction and mechanical properties of sintered body were examined, with emphasis on the relations between spinel formation and mechanical properties.