Effect of MgO addition on the monoclinic to tetragonal transition of ZrO2 fabricated by high energy ball milling

Abstract

In this work, we studied the formation of partially stabilized zirconia by a high energy ball milling (HEBM) approach. Zirconia powder was mixed with 8 mol% MgO and the powder mixture was milled for 10 hours. The structural and morphological evolutions of the powder particles were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The Williamson-Hall method was used to calculate the crystallite size of the zirconia powder particles. The results show that the tetragonal zirconia phase (t-ZrO2) can be very well stabilized after the addition of 8 mol% MgO. The formation of t-ZrO2 was identified by XRD analysis after 3 hours of ball milling. In addition, SEM results demonstrated a great refinement in the size of the ZrO2 particles whose distribution was in the sub-µm to nm range indicating better microstructural characteristics.