Phase Stability in Nanocrystalline Zirconia

摘要

Zirconia can be considered to be one of the most important ceramic materials because of its large range of industrial applications (catalysis, coatings, spacecraft shielding, paint additives, oxygen sensors, fuel cells, nuclear fuel matrices, an alternative high permittivity material to replace silicon oxide as a gate dielectric in MOS devices). Many of these applications require the use of zirconia in a nanocrystalline form. It is now well established that a monocline to tetragonal phase transition is trigged by the grain size of zirconia. The mechanism of this phase transition in zirconia is not yet clearly understood.