Journal des sciences et de l'ingénierie des matériaux

Synthesis and Crystallization Behavior of 3 mol% Yttria Partically Stabilized Zirconia (3Y-PSZ) Nanopowders by Microwave Pyrolysis Process

Abstract

Bingbing Fan, Fan Zhang, Jian Li, Hao Chen and Rui Zhang

A crystalline Nano powders of 3 mol% yttria-partially stabilized (3Y-PSZ) has been synthesized using ZrOCl2 and Y (NO3)3 as raw materials by microwave pyrolysis with a TE666 resonant mode at 700-900°C. The frequency of the microwave was 2.45 GHz with the maximum power of 10 KW, and a hybrid heating structure was used with insulation of porous mullite and SiC aided heaters. For comparison, conventional heating was performed in air at 750°C for 20 min. The as-synthesized products were characterized by SEM and TEM images, XRD patterns. It was found that microwave energy promotes the conversion of tetragonal ZrO2 (t-ZrO2) to monoclinic ZrO2 (m-ZrO2) phase compared with conventional pyrolysis. TEM images showed that highly dispersed 3Y-ZrO2 powders with ~23 nm in size were obtained by microwave pyrolysis at 750°C for 20 min.