Effects of pre-sintering and annealing on the optical transmittance of Zr-doped Y2O3 transparent ceramics fabricated by vacuum sintering conjugated with post-hot-isostatic pressing

In this work, Zr-doped Y2O3 transparent ceramics were fabricated by vacuum pre-sintering at various temperatures ranging from 1650 to 1800 °C combined with a post-hot-isostatic pressing (HIP) treatment. The pre-sintered samples all show black opaqueness mainly due to the formation of oxygen vacancies, which can be removed by post-annealing in air. The HIP treatment can also eliminate the blackness as well as residual pores, giving rise to optical transparency. The in-line transmittance of the samples after HIP was found to depend strongly on the microstructure of the as-sintered samples. The optimal microstructure of these types of samples before the HIP treatment should be fine grained with only intergranular pores, which can easily be removed by HIP. Annealing before HIP was shown to be necessary to enhance the transmittance of the samples. The effects of the pre-sintering heating rate on the optical transmittance of the HIP-treated samples were also studied.