Texturing of 3Y-TZP zirconia by slip casting in a high magnetic field of 17.4 T

Ceramics can be textured in a strong magnetic field, by aligning the suspended particles during colloidal processing and retaining this alignment in the green body. Attempts to align tetragonal zirconia particles however were not successful, not even in a high magnetic field of 17.4 T. In the current work, monoclinic zirconia was successfully aligned with its (1 0 0) plane perpendicular to the magnetic field direction by slip casting in a 17.4 T field. Textured tetragonal zirconia was reactively synthesized during sintering of undoped pure monoclinic zirconia and co-precipitated 8 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia. The sintered tetragonal zirconia inherited the alignment of the monoclinic zirconia particle precursor with a (1 0 0)m // (0 0 1)t orientation relationship. In other words, the t-ZrO2 grains were aligned with their (0 0 1) plane perpendicular to the magnetic field direction. The indentation toughness of the ceramic cast in the magnetic field is anisotropic and has an exceptionally high value of 14.6 MPa m0.5 along the [0 0 1] direction. A 3-pt flexural strength of 968 ± 77 MPa (load applied parallel to the magnetic field) was obtained for the ceramic cast in the strong magnetic field, which was 26% higher than for the ceramic cast without magnetic field.