Method of Fabricating Ceria‐Stabilized Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystals

Abstract

Most zirconia‐based toughened ceramics need specialized processes to achieve their desired properties. In this paper, we report the fabrication of toughened ceria‐stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystal by conventional processing, i.e., ball milling and cold‐pressing followed by sintering. We believe that ball milling works here because a somewhat coarser particle size is actually beneficial in this case. Although the samples were not fully dense (they need not be), a composition of ZrO 2 ‐12 mol% CeO 2 yielded a fracture toughness value of 14.1 MPa·m 1/2 . This is comparable to values reported for materials processed by specialized techniques and can be rationalized in terms of R‐curve behavior.