XRD study of the effect of the processing variables on the synthesis of nanozirconia in the presence of MWCNT

Several challenges must be solved to obtain an effective introduction of carbon nanotubes in a ceramic matrix. Dispersion, good load transfer, and wettability are the major issues to be overcome to obtain good final properties of a zirconia nanocomposite. We have developed a process to coat multi-wall carbon nanotubes with nanozirconia to deal with these challenges. The process is based on the hydrothermal synthesis of tetragonal zirconia nanoparticles in the presence of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). In this work, X-ray diffraction has been used to study the influence of the processing variables in order to optimize this process. The theoretical mathematical models that relate the percentage of tetragonal zirconia and their crystallinity in relation to the processing variables have been extracted.