Towards long lasting zirconia-based composites for dental implants: Transformation induced plasticity and its consequence on ceramic reliability

Zirconia-based composites were developed through an innovative processing route able to tune compositional and microstructural features very precisely. Fully-dense ceria-stabilized zirconia ceramics (84 vol% Ce-TZP) containing equiaxed alumina (8 vol%Al2O3) and elongated strontium hexa-aluminate (8 vol% SrAl12O19) second phases were obtained by conventional sintering. This work deals with the effect of the zirconia stabilization degree (CeO2 in the range 10.0–11.5 mol%) on the transformability and mechanical properties of Ce-TZP-Al2O3-SrAl12O19 materials. Vickers hardness, biaxial flexural strength and Single-edge V-notched beam tests revealed a strong influence of ceria content on the mechanical properties. Composites with 11.0 mol% CeO2 or above exhibited the classical behaviour of brittle ceramics, with no apparent plasticity and very low strain to failure. On the contrary, composites with 10.5 mol% CeO2 or less showed large transformation-induced plasticity and almost no dispersion in strength data. Materials with 10.5 mol% of ceria showed the highest values in terms of biaxial bending strength (up to 1.1 GPa) and fracture toughness (>10 MPa√m). In these ceramics, as zirconia transformation precedes failure, the Weibull modulus was exceptionally high and reached a value of 60, which is in the range typically reported for metals. The results achieved demonstrate the high potential of using these new strong, tough and stable zirconia-based composites in structural biomedical applications.