Fabrication and mechanical behavior of nano-grained LaGdZr2O7 transparent ceramic.

Herein, we report transparent LaGdZr 2 O 7 nano-grained ceramics with an average grain size of 10 nm prepared using the high-pressure sintering method at 5.0 GPa/450 °C. These ceramics showed improved plastic deformation as compared to transparent micro-grained LaGdZr 2 O 7 ceramics. Moreover, the fracture toughness of the nano-grained ceramics reached up to 3.4 MPam1/2, which is 79 % higher than that of the micro-grained samples. This improvement in the fracture toughness of the nano-grained ceramics was associated with the presence of a large number of weak grain boundaries in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]