Preparation of Antistatic Ceramics Employing Fe-infiltration in Sintered Zirconia Body

Abstract

Antistatic ceramic with good mechanical performance has wide application in fields of aerospace, petrochemical engineering, electronics and textile. Antistatic ceramic ZrO2 was fabricated via an innovative surface modification method based on embedding Fe-infiltration into the 3Y-TZP ceramic at high temperature, which showed good antistatic and mechanical properties. In addition, microstructure and morphology of as-prepared samples were characterized by XRD, SEM and XPS. Furthermore, the antistatic mechanism of ZrO2 ceramics was investigated. The effects of infiltration temperature and infiltration time on vickers hardness and surface resistivity of specimen were evaluated. Experimental results showed that the surface resistivity and hardness decreased with the increase of infiltration temperature and infiltration time, in which the surface resistivity decreased from more than 10 Ω/□ to 8.3×10 Ω/□, and the hardness of ZrO2 ceramics decreased from 12.7 GPa to 11.23 GPa after infiltration at 1000°C for 4 h. Analysis results indicated that there was a phase transformation of ZrO2 from t-ZrO2 to m-ZrO2 in the infiltration process. It was also found that Fe, Fe3O4 and FeO located in the interface of infiltration layer, which were attributed to the antistatic property of ZrO2 ceramics.