Structure and thermal behavior studies of ZrO2 treated by different concentrations of sulfuric acid

Abstract The acid strength of ZrO2 was enhanced after it was treated with H2SO4 or other SOx sources. This research investigated how this H2SO4 treatment affects the ZrO2 material from the structural point of view. A series of ZrO2 samples. which were prepared through the solution method with different sulfuric acid concentrations, were studied by X-ray diffraction and thermal analyses to reveal the correlation between the physical properties of the samples and the concentration of the acid. XRD results indicated that the yield of ZrO2 with tetragonal form declined with the concentration of the acid and vanished as its concentration became higher than 1N. Also, the crystallinity of the samples became poor with the increase of the concentration of the acid. The thermal analysis showed that the amounts of acid (or SO2) absorbed by the samples were proportional to the concentration of sulfuric acid.