Ultrahigh toughness zirconia ceramics.

The attainment of both high strength and toughness is the ultimate goal for most structural materials. Although ceramic material has been considered for use as a structural material due to its high strength and good chemical stability, it suffers from the limitation of low toughness. For instance, although Y2O3-stabilized tetragonal ZrO2 polycrystals (Y-TZPs) exhibit remarkable toughness among ceramics due to their phase transformation toughening mechanism, this toughness is still much weaker than that of metals. Here, we report Y-TZP-based ceramic materials with toughnesses exceeding 20 MPa m1/2, which is comparable to those of metals, while maintaining strengths over 1,200 MPa. The superior mechanical properties are realized by reducing the phase stability of tetragonal zirconia by tailoring the microstructure and chemistry of the Y-TZP. The proposed ceramic materials can further advance the design and application of ceramic-based structural materials.

Transparent polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride.

Glasses and single crystals have traditionally been used as optical windows. Recently, there has been a high demand for harder and tougher optical windows that are able to endure severe conditions. Transparent polycrystalline ceramics can fulfill this demand because of their superior mechanical properties. It is known that polycrystalline ceramics with a spinel structure in compositions of MgAl2O4 and aluminum oxynitride (γ-AlON) show high optical transparency. Here we report the synthesis of the hardest transparent spinel ceramic, i.e. polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride (c-Si3N4). This material shows an intrinsic optical transparency over a wide range of wavelengths below its band-gap energy (258 nm) and is categorized as one of the third hardest materials next to diamond and cubic boron nitride (cBN). Since the high temperature metastability of c-Si3N4 in air is superior to those of diamond and cBN, the transparent c-Si3N4 ceramic can potentially be used as a window under extremely severe conditions.

Formation of secondary phase at grain boundary of flash-sintered BaTiO3.

Recently, Raj et.al. have developed a very unique sintering technique, called flash-sintering [1]. According to their report, fully densified ZrO2-3mol%Y2O3 ceramic bulks were successfully obtained only at 800°C for 5sec. Considering the conventional sintering condition around 1500°C for a few hours necessary to obtain ZrO2-3mol%Y2O3 ceramic bulks, their sintering technique is very attracting from a viewpoint of sintering temperature, soaking time and further the physical phenomena. The flash-sintering is a technique that green compacts were heating under application of high electric field. When furnace temperature reaches at a critical temperature, the electric current abruptly increases and the compact sinters near full density with a very high shrinkage rate. So far, a few studies about flash-sintering were reported for Y2O3 [2], SrTiO3, MgO-Al2O3. To understand the detail mechanism of flash-sintering, more case studies must be necessary. In this study, we focused BaTiO3 widely used for electro-ceramics, which has not been investigated from a viewpoint of flash-sintering.Green compacts were prepared from BaTiO3 raw powders (0.1-m, 99.9%, SAKAI chemical industry Co. Ltd., Lot. No.1308607) after uniaxially pressed at 100MPa into a rectangular shape with 2x10x30mm(3). The green compacts were suspended into a box type furnace by Pt-wires with Pt-based paste. Then, the furnace temperature was raised at 300°C/h under application of electric field ranged from 25V/cm to 350V/cm with monitoring the specimen current. After sintering, the shrinkages, microstructure of the sintered compacts were investigated.Sintering rates at all electric fields were found to be accelerated by applying electric field in BaTiO3. The appearance of abrupt current increment was confirmed over the application of 75V/cm. For example, a density of green compact reached about 90% relative density of BaTiO3 only at 1020°C for 1min at 100V/cm. However, the final shrinkages were revealed to decrease with an increase in electric fields, which is very different from the case of ZrO2-3mol%Y2O3 and Y2O3 ceramics. This fact means that application of high electric fields does not effectively operate for enhancement of shrinkage rates in the case of BaTiO3. In contrast, only gradual current increment was observed at 25V/cm, which is categorized in field-assisted sintering (FAST) process. The density of the green compact at 25V/cm was more than 95%.To investigate the mechanism of the decrease in a total shrinkage with electric fields, the microstructure of flash-sintered compact was observed. As a result, it was found that discharge occurs during flash-sintering process, indicating that the input power due to high electric fields does not work effectively. A typical example of the microstructure near the discharge area is shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 1 is a TEM bright field image taken from BaTiO3 flash-sintered at 100V/cm. As seen in the image, the formation of a secondary phase along the grain boundary can be clearly seen. Diffractometric and EDS analysis have revealed that the secondary phase is BaTi4O9, one of compounds between BaO and TiO2 system. By discharging, grain boundaries partially melt and a part of Ba vaporizes to form BaTi4O9 with cooling. To investigate flash-sintering behaviors, it was concluded that FAST process play an important role to enhance the shrinklage rate in the case of BaTiO3.jmicro;63/suppl_1/i19/DFU048F1F1DFU048F1Fig. 1.TEM bright field image of a secondary phase and the electron diffraction pattern taken from the secondary phase.

Nanocrystalline, ultra-degradation-resistant zirconia: its grain boundary nanostructure and nanochemistry.

Y2O3-stabilized tetragonal ZrO2 polycrystal (Y-TZP) has been known to be an excellent structural material with high strength and toughness since the pioneering study by Garvie et al. in 1975. However, Y-TZP is not considered an environmental or biomedical material because it undergoes an inherent tetragonal-to-monoclinic (T → M) phase transformation in humid or aqueous environment, which leads to premature failure, so-called low-temperature degradation (LTD). In this study, we demonstrate for the first time that this fatal shortcoming of Y-TZP can be resolved by controlling the grain boundary nanostructure and chemical composition distribution in Y-TZP. Nanocrystalline Y-TZP doped with Al(3+) and Ge(4+) ions exhibits no LTD for more than 4 years in hot water at 140 °C, whereas 70% of the tetragonal phase in conventional TZP transforms to the monoclinic phase within only 15 h. This innovative Y-TZP can be fabricated by pressureless sintering at 1200 °C; far below the sintering temperature for conventional Y-TZP. The developed TZP ceramics will be useful in numerous environmental-proofing applications, particularly in the biomedical engineering field.

Mantle superplasticity and its self-made demise.

The unusual capability of solid crystalline materials to deform plastically, known as superplasticity, has been found in metals and even in ceramics. Such superplastic behaviour has been speculated for decades to take place in geological materials, ranging from surface ice sheets to the Earth's lower mantle. In materials science, superplasticity is confirmed when the material deforms with large tensile strain without failure; however, no experimental studies have yet shown this characteristic in geomaterials. Here we show that polycrystalline forsterite + periclase (9:1) and forsterite + enstatite + diopside (7:2.5:0.5), which are good analogues for Earth's mantle, undergo homogeneous elongation of up to 500 per cent under subsolidus conditions. Such superplastic deformation is accompanied by strain hardening, which is well explained by the grain size sensitivity of superplasticity and grain growth under grain switching conditions (that is, grain boundary sliding); grain boundary sliding is the main deformation mechanism for superplasticity. We apply the observed strain-grain size-viscosity relationship to portions of the mantle where superplasticity has been presumed to take place, such as localized shear zones in the upper mantle and within subducting slabs penetrating into the transition zone and lower mantle after a phase transformation. Calculations show that superplastic flow in the mantle is inevitably accompanied by significant grain growth that can bring fine grained (≤1 µm) rocks to coarse-grained (1-10 mm) aggregates, resulting in increasing mantle viscosity and finally termination of superplastic flow.

Charge transport through polyene self-assembled monolayers from multiscale computer simulations.

We combine first-principles density-functional theory with matrix Green's function calculations to predict the structures and charge transport characteristics of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of four classes of systems in contact with Au(111) electrodes: conjugated polyene chains (n = 4, 8, 12, 16, and 30) thiolated at one or both ends and saturated alkane chains (n = 4, 8, 12, and 16) thiolated at one or both ends. For the polyene SAMs, we find no decay in the current as a function of chain length and conclude that these 1-3 nm long polyene SAMs act as metallic wires. We also find that the polyene-monothiolate leads to a contact resistance only 2.8 times higher than that for the polyene-dithiolate chains, indicating that the device conductance is dominated by the properties of the molecular connector with less importance in having a second molecule-electrode contact. For the alkane SAMs, we observe the normal exponential decay in the current as a function of the chain length with a decay constant of beta(n) = 0.82 for the alkane-monothiolate and 0.88 for the alkane-dithiolate. We find that the contact resistance for the alkane-monothiolate is 12.5 times higher than that for the alkane-dithiolate chains, reflecting the extra resistance due to the weak contact on the nonthiolated end. These contrasting charge transport characteristics of alkane and polyene SAMs and their contact dependence are explained in terms of the atomic projected density of states.