Improved Microstructure and Hardness Properties of Low-Temperature Microwave-Sintered Y(2)O(3) Stabilized ZrO(2) Ceramics with Additions of Nano TiO(2) Powders

This paper reports the improvement of microstructural and hardness properties of 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (3Y-TZP) ceramics with nano TiO(2) powders (with 0, 0.9, 1.8, and 2.7 wt%) added using a low-temperature microwave-assisted sintering of 1250 °C. Even at such a low sintering temperature, all sintered samples had the main phase of tetragonal zirconia (t-ZrO(2)) without the appearance of the secondary monoclinic phase or TiO(2) phase, and had high relative densities, larger than 95%. The grain growth was well developed, and the grain sizes were around 300–600 nm. The Ti and O elements appeared at the grain and grain boundary and increased with the increased nano TiO(2) contents identified by the element analysis, although the TiO(2) phase did not appear in the X-ray pattern. The Vickers hardness was in the range of 10.5 to 14.5 GPa, which first increased with increasing content till 0.9 wt% and then decreased. With citric acid corrosion treatment for 10 h, the Vickers hardness only decreased from 14.34 GPa to 13.55 GPa with the addition of 0.9 wt% nano TiO(2) powder. The experiment results showed that 0.9 wt% nano TiO(2) addition can improve the densification as well as the Vickers hardness under a low temperature of microwave-assisted sintering.