Influence of mechanical treatment on consolidation processes of ultradisperse powders of stabilized zirconium oxide

The effect of preliminary machining of ultradisperse powders of stabilized zirconium dioxide and its composite on consolidation in compacts under uniaxial static pressing and subsequent sintering is studied. The investigations were carried out with powders of compositions (in mol %) 97ZrO ₂ –3Y ₂ O ₃ and 80Al ₂ O ₃ – 20(ZrO ₂ –Y), which were obtained by the sol-gel and the plasma-chemical method, respectively. Mechanical processing of powders was carried out in two ways. The first method consisted in preliminary static pressing of powders at elevated pressure of 900 MPa and their subsequent grinding in a ball mill. The second method consisted in grinding the initial powders in an Activator-2SL planetary mill with drums and grinding balls of zirconia. It is established that mechanical treatment significantly affects the density of compacts. In this case, there is no strict correlation between the density of the sintered ceramic and the density of compacts. With increasing density of compacts, their expansion can be observed at the isothermal holding stage, which leads to a decrease in density of the ceramic. It is shown that, in dry grinding to improve the technological properties of ultradisperse powders obtained by the sol-gel and plasma-chemical methods, the most suitable is the method of mechanical treatment, which consists in pre-pressing the powders at elevated pressure and then grinding them in a ball mill.