Toughness tailoring of yttria-doped zirconia ceramics

Despite the impressive development in understanding transformation toughening, tailoring the toughness of yttria-doped zirconia ceramics remained a major challenge. In our research, a simple but innovative route based on the mixing and hot pressing (under identical conditions) of zirconia powders with varying yttria content (3 and 0 mol%) is developed to investigate this critical issue. The experimental results clearly reveal that the fracture toughness of yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystalline (Y-TZP) ceramics can be tailored by careful mixing of co-precipitated and yttria-free zirconia starting powders.