Formation of supersaturated solid solution in ZrO2CeO2 system induced by mechanical alloying

Abstract

To date, studies of mechanical alloying appear to be mainly focused on metallic systems. In fact, mechanical milling of materials has long been a major component of ceramic processing. The structure variation of ceramics during milling process had been observed long before the wide applications of mechanical alloying. Despite this, many recent MA researchers, unfortunately, take it for granted that ceramics can only be refined while their structure cannot be changed during milling. The Recent work proved that mechanical alloying of ceramics is also possible. This result is important not only for the broader applications of ceramics but also for the synthesis of new structure ceramic materials. In this paper the authors report the formation of a supersaturated solid solution of zirconia in fluorite-structure ceria starting from the milling of zirconia and ceria crystalline powder mixtures.