Lifetime estimation of zirconia ceramics by linear ageing kinetics

Up to now, the ageing kinetics of zirconia ceramics were mainly derived from the sigmoidal evolution of the surface phase transformation as a function of time, as quantified by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD). However, the transformation propagation into the material should be better to monitor the ageing kinetics. In this work, μ-Raman spectroscopy was used to quantitatively measure the transformation profiles in depth as a function of ageing time at 160 °C, 140 °C, 134 °C and 110 °C.A linear relationship between the transformed depth and the ageing time was observed for all investigated yttria stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystals (3Y-TZP). Furthermore, the μ-Raman investigation of residual stresses in the subsurface of aged 3Y-TZPs showed that the highest tensile stress was located just ahead of the transformation front, indicating the key responsibility of stress accumulation for transformation front propagating into the material. Moreover, the linear kinetics of the transformation propagation were more accurate to calculate the apparent activation energy of the ageing process and allowed a more straightforward estimation of the lifetime of 3Y-TZP at body temperature, as compared to the conventional ageing kinetic parameters obtained from the surface transformation analysis by XRD.