Strong Binding Between YSZ Ceramic and 304 Steel Induced by Explosive Shaping

Combining Ceramic and metal phases by explosion treatment is difficult on account of the low toughness and plasticity of the ceramic phases. To solve the problem, fine Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) powders were selected as an example in this work. It can be observed that part of the YSZ powders would agglomerate to spherical large particles spontaneously and YSZ layer can combine with steel substrates strongly after explosion treatment as expected. It can be explained by finite element modeling that YSZ powders were more likely to combine the steel substrate when large and small particles coexisted. Moreover, the interface between YSZ and steel substrates was investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). It was found that numerous sharp corners were generated at the interface during explosion process which possessed high resilience, and they improved the bearing capacity of the interface. In microcosm, semi-coherent boundaries and amorphous phases were detected at the interface which led to the strong metallurgical bonding between the two phases. In general, this work offers a feasible method to combine ceramic and metal substrate efficiently in a simple way.