The effect of milling/mixing of zirconia with equimolar addition of yttria and niobia in a high energy mill

Zirconia is one of ceramic materials with big potential of development in function of yours particularities who evolves the stabilization of phases on room temperatures and properties of this stabilization, one new field of research is opened who is the addition equimolar of yttria and niobia, aiming the growth of fracture toughness of this materials. Poly (vinyl alcohol) was added on the composition to be mixed with the powders. The times of mixing studied were of 30, 60 and 90 minutes. The samples were compacted by uniaxial pressing with 50 MPa and isostatic pressing with 300 MPa. They were sintered in a temperature of 1550 deg C with a baseline of one hour. Comparison of densities and analysis of pores were done. Samples were separated to microstructural characterization by Vickers hardness and fracture toughness. Analysis with x-ray diffraction was done to identification of phases. (author)