How do the grains slide in fine-grained zirconia polycrystals at high temperature.pdf

1 How do the grains slide in fine-grained zirconia polycrystals at high temperature? Maren Daraktchiev,a) and Robert Schaller Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, IPMC, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Laurent Gremillard, Thierry Epicier, Jerome Chevalier, and Gilbert Fantozzi Université de Lyon, INSA-Lyon, MATEIS - UMR CNRS 5510, F-69621 Villeurbanne, Cedex, France Degradation of mechanical properties of zirconia polycrystals is hardly discussed in terms of solution-precipitation grain-boundary sliding due to experimental controversies over imaging of intergranular amorphous phases at high and room temperatures. Here, the authors applied the techniques of mechanical spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to shed light on the amorphization of grain interfaces at high temperature where the interface-reaction determines the behaviour of fine-grained zirconia polycrystals. They present mechanical spectroscopy results, which yield evidences of an intergranular amorphous phase in silica doped and high-purity zirconia at high temperature. Quenching of zirconia polycrystals reveals an intergranular amorphous phase on TEM images at room temperature. a) Current address: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, United Kingdom; Electronic address: mdar04@esc.cam.ac.uk 2 Mechanical loss or internal friction of a material is a quantity, which measures the conversion of the mechanical energy of a vibrating material into heat.1,2 It is investigated by the technique of mechanical spectroscopy. In the framework of mechanical spectroscopy, the mechanical loss is examined by applying a periodic mechanical stress σ(ω)=σ0exp(iωt) and recording the dynamic response of the material ε(ω)= ε0exp(iωt-iφ) under the effect of that stress, where ε(ω) is the strain as a function of circular frequency ω. The phase lag φ or tanφ (true for a small phase angle φ)