Maximize Durability With Zirconia Toughened Alumina Components
ZTA ceramics provide superior tribological properties when compared with regular alumina ceramics, making them the ideal choice for cutting tools, bearings, pumps and fluid management components.
Under stress, zirconia particles shift from metastable tetragonal crystal structures to monoclinic ones, producing volume expansion that compresses cracks in an alumina matrix and significantly improving fracture toughness.
Wear Resistance
Zirconia Toughened Alumina (ZTA) is an extremely durable material. It can withstand impact abrasion or frictional wear without suffering damage; making it an excellent material choice for cutting wheels. Furthermore, ZTA can withstand high temperatures without becoming damaged or degraded.
ZTA is highly resistant to chemical corrosion, making it an excellent material choice for medical implants. Biocompatible and capable of withstanding bodily fluid contact, ZTA also boasts high flexural strength – perfect for hip replacement applications.
ZTA is created through stress-induced transformation of fine tetragonal zirconia particles into monoclinic shape. This increases fracture toughness by expanding space around cracks. As such, ZTA proves far stronger and more durable than alumina for wear applications.
Corrosion Resistance
Zirconia Toughened Alumina (ZTA) is an advanced technical ceramic material widely utilized in industry for its strength, toughness, wear resistance and corrosion resistance properties. ZTA finds applications across numerous sectors including automotive and aerospace for components like engine components, gas turbines and mechanical parts while serving as wear components in pumps, seals and cutting tools used for machining applications. Medical field surgeries may also employ this material due to its biocompatibility.
Durability in this material comes from its stress-induced transformation toughening process, in which zirconia particles in an alumina matrix undergo transformation to monoclinic structures through stress inducing transformation toughening, helping close cracks and increase fracture toughness, thus protecting itself from damage in varied environments such as phosphoric acid, sulphuric acid and distilled water. This allows it to resist corrosion.
High Strength
Combining alumina and zirconia results in increased strength and fracture toughness compared to standard alumina, making ZTA an excellent material choice for components subjected to impact loading. Furthermore, ZTA also boasts great chemical corrosion resistance.
ZTA boasts superior hardness and strength due to the transformation of tetragonal zirconia particles into monoclinic crystals through stress-induced transformation by mechanical loading or temperature fluctuations, and subsequent pressure from monoclinic zirconia crystal formation compressing an alumina matrix, giving it great strength, durability, and thermal shock resistance.
This unique ceramic also boasts extremely high bending strength and low thermal expansion coefficient, making it perfect for applications requiring cooling mechanisms. Furthermore, its resistance to corrosive chemicals – including bodily fluids – makes medical implants suitable for placement inside humans without risk of degradation over time allowing patients to enjoy comfortable experiences without worry over implant deterioration over time.
High Toughness
ZTA ceramics improve alumina’s toughness through stress-induced transformation of zirconia particles into fine ones, achieved via sintering and hot isostatic pressing (HIP). Depending on how much zirconia exists in its matrix, ZTA may either have low or high toughness properties.
Clausen demonstrated in 1976 that alumina matrices containing unstabilized zirconia could be toughened to enhance mechanical properties by including unstabilized zirconia crystals as finely dispersed metastable precipitates, such as those formed from unstabilized zirconia crystals, to improve mechanical properties. He proved this point using crack propagation; when cracks moved forward through the material and compressed its zone ahead of their tip they could transform to monoclinic phase and convert to it more readily than otherwise would happen otherwise.
This toughening mechanism increases flexural strength and fracture toughness of alumina while simultaneously increasing hardness, creating an unparalleled composite material suitable for applications requiring high hardness, stiffness, fracture resistance and cooling requirements such as industrial cutters, milling wear parts or cooling components.