C_t-axis orientation on ground surface of tetragonal zirconia polycrystals

Surface grinding resulted in the crystallographic texture change of TZP. The intensity of (002) peak from the surface in an X-ray diffraction pattern increased significantly on grinding the surface of TZP, while that of (200) peak decreased. Similar phenomena were observed on the (113) and (311) peaks but not on the (202) and (220) peaks. The intensity enhancement of the (002) peak indicates that many small crystallites or domains in the near-surface region reoriented themselves upon grinding in such a way that their c_t axes become orthogonal to the surface. On the other hand, pole figures on (200), (311) and (220) peaks showed that the three dimensional region where the exchange between a_t axes and c_t axes occurred by grinding, and their c_t axes reoriented to the preferred orientation only when grinding was carried out to a certain limited direction against original crystal orientation.