Production and Characterization of Nanostructured Ceramic Materials through Metastable Route

摘要

Producing nanostructured materials through metastable phases is an interesting new route in the field of ceramic materials. In this work, both metastable powders have been obtained by a metastability processing route. The technology used has been Atmospheric Plasma Spraying followed by rapid quenching (APS-Q) in order to obtain highly metastable powders. This metastability route involves the use of ceramic phases that are immiscible or nearly immiscible as solids but with extended solubility in the liquid state. When these binary systems are rapidly quenched from the solid state, they often turn into a metastable amorphous structure. These structures, upon recrystallisation at moderate temperature treatments, result in a stable finegrained (nanocomposite) microstructure. The obtained materials have been characterised using XRD, SEM and FESEM. This work has been developed in the framework of the project “NAMAMET”. A brief explanation of the other metastability routes is reported. The metastability route has also been applied to metallic-based nanocomposites opening a new field of possibilities.