Development of TiO 2 /ZrO 2 Multi-Material Obtained from Ceramic Pastes for Material Extrusion.

The application of additive manufacturing method such as material extrusion (MEX) allows the successful fabrication of ceramic products, including multi-ceramic products. Promising materials in this research area are TiO 2 and ZrO 2 ceramics, which can be used in electrical and electronic engineering. The aim of this work is to investigate the possibility of fabricating TiO 2 /ZrO 2 multi-materials from ceramic pastes that can be used in the MEX. In this work, defects, chemical and phase composition, and microhardness were analyzed in multi-ceramic samples after sintering. Multi-ceramic TiO 2 /ZrO 2 samples after the sintering process without interlayer could not be fabricated due to a too large difference in shrinkage between TiO 2 and ZrO 2 . The samples with one and three interlayers also have defects, but they are less significant and can be fabricated. The average hardness for the TiO 2 zone was 636.7 HV and for the ZrO 2 zone was 1101 HV. In the TiO 2 zone, only TiO 2 phase in rutile is observed, while in the interlayer zones, in addition to rutile, ZrO 2 and ZrTiO 4 are also present, as is a small amount of Y 2 O 3 . In the zone ZrO 2 , only the ZrO 2 phase is observed. The chemical analysis revealed that the interlayers comprise sintered ZrO 2 granules enveloped by TiO 2 , ZrO 2 , and ZrTiO 4 .