Low Temperature Sintered 2Y-TZP Materials with High Performance

Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystals (TZP) stabilized with 2mol% Y2O3(2Y-TZP) with superfine grains and high perfomances were obtained by adding certain glassy additives into 2Y-TZP powders and sintered at lower temperatures. The sintering character, microstructure and mechanical properties of the materials with various content of additives were investigated. It could not only lower sintering temperatures, but also improve flexural strength and fracture toughness of the materials by the common effect of cryptomere strengthening and phase transformation toughening. The influence of stabilizer content on mechanical properties of low temperature sintered Y-TZP was discussed. The results showed that for 2Y-TZP materials, because of low stabilizer content and small critical transformation size, more tetragonal zirconia could change into mono-clinal, and had better effect of transformation toughening, hence higher fracture toughness was obtained.