Toughening effect and oxidation behavior of MoSi2-ZrO2 composites

Abstract Toughening effect of ZrO2-particles on MoSi2-based materials is one of the important toughening mechanism. In this work, the influence of particle size and volume percentage of unstabilized ZrO2-addition on toughening effect in MoSi2-matrix composites was studied. The measured data revealed that the fine particle size, < 1 μm, with certain volume percentages around 20% have given more effective toughening results. The tested materials were prepared by three different sintering processes: pressure-less sintering (PLS), hot-press sintering (HPS) and PLS + Hipping sintering. The measured data on sintered density, RT-hardness and RT-toughness indicated that the PLS process could be a practical and economical method for producing MOSi2-ZrO2 composites in industry. Oxidation behavior of MoSi2-ZrO2 composites was also studied in the work. Clearly, the ZrO2-addition made the composites having a worse oxidation resistance than the monolithic MoSi2, which means that a low ZrO2-addition should be used in the composites, as far as an acceptable toughening effect was reached.