HRTEM observation of the monoclinic-to-tetragonal m-t) phase transition in nanocrystalline ZrO₂

Abstract

Abstract(indices for the primitive tetragonal cell) have been found between the tetragonal (t) and monoclinic (m) domains during the electron irradiation-induced m-t phase transition observed in-situ with HREM within isolated zirconia nanoparticles. Geometric models of the m-t interfaces are proposed.

The transformation balance between two types of structural defects in silica glass in ion-irradiation processes

“…Ion irradiation can induce a great amount of structural damage in crystalline materials, including point defect, defect cluster, dislocation and amorphization zones [1][2][3]. Irradiation-induced phase transformation and structural modification have been reported in many previous studies [4][5][6][7][8]. However, for the amorphous materials, the dynamic processes of the defect formation and irradiation-induced structural modification are still not clear.…”

Geometrical structural complexes of ZrO2 nanoparticles

“…Kasatkin et al [6] observed monoclinic-tetragonal ( m t ) structural transformations in nanocrystalline zirconia by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The transformations were induced by an electron beam within isolated polydomain nanoparticles with different orientational relationships between domains, specifically with the orientational relationships (100) m || (110) t and [001] m || [001] t , which agrees with the results of our earlier work [4].…”

Electron microscopy investigations of metal-support interaction effects in M/Y2O3 and M/ZrO2 thin films (M=Cu, Ni)

“…Regarding the question what exactly stabilizes the tetragonal structure in our systems, epitaxial relations of the tetragonal ZrO 2 structure with the underlying fcc NaCl lattice have been held responsible for the stabilization [31], alongside a small particle size being definitely below the experimentally estimated critical size for stabilization of the tetragonal phase (10e40 nm) [12,31].…”

“…Specifically, embedding of the grains in a matrix has been shown to oppose the transformation [1]. Electron microscopy has been shown in the past to be a particular useful tool for investigating all aspects of this phase transformation [1,12,13,16,17,20]. One aspect, being relevant also for the present case, is the possibility to induce the tetra gonal / monoclinic phase transformation by irradiation with the electron beam of an electron microscope [1].…”