Isothermal and athermal type martensitic transformations in yttria doped zirconia

The phase transformation from the high temperature tetragonal phase to the low temperature monoclinic phase of zirconia had been long considered to be a typical athermal martensitic transformation until it was recently identified to be a fast isothermal transformation. The isothermal nature becomes more apparent when a stabilizing oxide, such as yttria, is doped, by which the transformation temperature is reduced and accordingly the transformation rate becomes low. Thus it becomes easy to experimentally establish a C-curve nature in a TTT （Time-Temperature-Transformation） diagram. The C-curve approaches that of well known isothermal transformation of Y-TZP （Yttria Doped Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystals）, which typically contains 3mol% of Y2O3.In principle, an isothermal transformation can be suppressed by a rapid cooling so that the cooling curve avoids intersecting the C-curve in TTT diagram. Y-TZP is the case, where the stability of the metastable tetragonal phase is relatively high and thus the tetragonal phase persists even at the liquid nitrogen temperature. On the other hand, the high temperature tetragonal phase of pure zirconia can never be quenched-in at room temperature by a rapid cooling; instead it always turns into monoclinic phase at room temperature. This suggests the occurrence of an athermal transformation after escaping the isothermal transformation, provided the cooling rate was fast enough to suppress the isothermal transformation. Thus, with an intermediate yttria composition, it would be possible to obtain the tetragonal phase which is not only metastable at room temperature but athermally transforms into the monoclinic phase by subzero cooling. The objective of the present work is to show that, with a certain range of yttria content, the tetragonal phase can be quenched in at room temperature and undergoes isothermal transformation and athermal transformation depending on being heated at a moderate temperature or under-cooled below room temperature. Because both of the product phases are essentially the same monoclinic phase, both transformations are regarded as martensitic transformation, i.e. isothermal and athermal martensite. In some steels such as Fe-Mn-Ni and Fe-Ni-C, the occurrence of both isothermal and athermal martensitic transformations has been reported. However, in these cases, the isothermal transformation occurs at temperatures slightly above the Ms （Martensite start） temperatures, and thus these transformations are considered to conform the same C-curve. On the other hand, the Ms temperature of the present material is well below the C-curve, which suggests that completely different mechanisms are controlling the kinetics of these two modes of transformations. Other aspects on these transformations are also to be reported..