Atomic force microscopy study and qualitative analysis of martensite relief in zirconia

TL;DR

This study uses atomic force microscopy to qualitatively analyze the surface relief caused by martensitic transformation in zirconia, providing detailed insights into the transformation mechanisms and strain accommodation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of AFM in studying martensite relief in zirconia and applies martensitic crystallography theory to explain observed features.

Findings

AFM provides high-precision analysis of martensite relief.

Transformation strain is accommodated by variant pairs and microcracking.

Variants growth sequences reveal transformation initiation and propagation.

Abstract

A recent report [S. Deville et al., J. Am. Ceram. Soc., 86(12), 2225 (2003)] has shown the new possibilities offered by atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate martensitic transformation induced relief in zirconia. In this paper, we studied qualitatively the surface relief resulting from martensitic tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation in yttria and ceria-doped zirconia by AFM. AFM appears as a very powerful tool to investigate martensite relief with a great precision. The phenomenological theory of martensitic crystallography could be succesfully applied to explain all the observed features. The formation conditions of the martensite are discussed, as well as ways of accommodating locally the transformation strain, i.e. self-accommodating variant pairs and microcracking. Variants growth sequences are observed. These observations bring new insights and explanations on the transformation initiation and propagation sequences.