Critical Influence of the Processing Route on the Mechanical Properties of Zirconia Composites with Graphene Nanoplatelets

Abstract

Graphene-based nanostructures, used as potential reinforcement in ceramic composites, have a great tendency to agglomerate. This requires the use of homogenization techniques during the powder processing, posing the need to evaluate how these techniques affect the microstructure and the mechanical properties of the resulting composites. The influence of the processing route on the properties of 3YTZP (3 mol % yttria tetragonal zirconia polycrystals) ceramic composites with 10 vol % cost-effective GNP (graphene nanoplatelets) has been addressed. Four different powder processing routines combining ultrasonic powder agitation (UA) and planetary ball milling (PBM) in wet and dry media have been used and all the composites were densified by spark plasma sintering (SPS). The mechanical properties at room temperature in the macroscale have been assessed by Vickers indentations, four-point bending tests and the impulse-echo technique, while instrumented indentation was used to measure the hardness and Young’s modulus at the nanoscale. The application of dry-PBM enhances greatly the mechanical and electrical isotropy of the composites, slightly increases the hardness and lowers the elastic modulus, independently of the application of UA. The combination of UA and dry-PBM enhances the flexure strength by 50%, which is desirable for structural applications.

Ageing-resistant zirconia/graphene-based nanostructures composites for use as biomaterials

“…In relation to the matrix, all the composites exhibited sub-micrometric equiaxed zirconia grains as reported elsewhere [38,49,58]. Table 2 shows the mean grain size and standard deviation of the lognormal distribution of the ceramic grains.…”

Osteoinductive and antimicrobial mechanisms of graphene‐based materials for enhancing bone tissue engineering

“…With the increase of GDs content, the mechanical properties of composite materials show a trend of increasing at first and then decreasing (Du et al, 2020). In addition, different interface binding modes (Compton et al, 2012;Park et al, 2008), oxygen content in GO (Maldonado-Magnere et al, 2020), and different manufacturing processes (Gallardo-Lopez et al, 2020) can affect the mechanical properties of graphene composites, which makes the mechanical properties of graphene composites tunable. Therefore, it is theoretically possible for GMs to mimic the properties of bone, which is extremely exciting in bone tissue engineering.…”

Progress in the application of graphene and its derivatives to osteogenesis

“…Various studies have found that the mechanical properties of graphene and its derivatives are affected by different interface binding modes, oxygen content, and different manufacturing processes, which makes the mechanical properties of graphene and its derivatives adjustable [ [40] , [41] , [42] ]. Therefore, graphene and its derivatives can theoretically mimic the mechanical properties of human bone and have broad prospects in the field of bone tissue engineering.…”