The Development of Zirconia Transformation Toughened Ceramics in Australia

In the field of advanced mechanical ceramics zirconia barely rates a mention prior to 1975. However since the "Ceramic Steel?" paper that year it has played a key role in terms of the development of tough and strong advanced ceramics. It has been incorporated into a range of composite systems and vast arrays of microstructures have been investigated. In this article the early stages of the research that led to the discovery of transformation toughening phenomenon in ceramics as well as some of the issues associated with the scientific understanding and scale up for commercialisation are presented. The focus of the article is on the so-called partially stabilised zirconia (PSZ) systems for engineering applications.