The effects of zirconia addition on sintering behavior, mechanical properties and ion conductivity of BICUVOX.1 material

The present work focuses on the effects of microstructural modifications in terms of grain size, and incorporation of zirconia as a second phase on the sintering behavior, mechanical properties and ion conductivity of Bi2V0.9Cu0.1O5.35 material. The mentioned properties have been determined by impedance spectroscopy, fracture toughness, and microhardness tests. The incorporation of ZrO2 (less than 1 wt.% ) increase the optimum sintering temperature, results in reducing the grain size of the sintered samples and leads to more than 15% improvement in the studied mechanical properties. On the other hand, the ion conductivity is slightly reduced at low temperature, which is probably due to high density of grain boundaries in the samples containing ZrO2.