Sinterability of Low-Cost 3Y-ZrO2 Powder and Mechanical Properties of the Sintered Body

This study investigated the effects of grain size and phase constitution on the mechanical properties of $3Y-ZrO_2$ by varying the sintering conditions. The raw powder prepared by a low-cost wet milling using the coarse solid oxide powders was sintered by both pressureless sintering and hot-pressing, respectively. As increasing holding time at $1450^{\circ}C$ for pressureless sintering, it promoted the microstructural coarsening of matrix grains and the phase transformation to tetragonal phase, whereas the bimodal microstructure embedded with abnormal $cubic-ZrO_2$ grains was observed regardless of sintering time. On the other hand, the specimens hot-pressed at $1300^{\circ}C$ for 2 h reached ~ 97% of relative density with homogeneous fine microstructure and mixed phase constitution. It was found that the proportion of untransformed monoclinic zirconia had the most adverse effect on the biaxial strength compared to the impacts of grain size and density. The pressureless sintering of the low-cost powder for prolonged sintering time to 8 h led to a decent combination of mechanical properties ($H_V=13.2GPa$, $K_{IC}=8.16MPa{\cdot}m^{1/2}$, ${\sigma}=981MPa$).