Preparation of zirconia mullite flakes via a plasma rapid solidification process using starting materials derived from a sol–gel technique

Mullite/ZrO2 coatings produced by flame spraying

“…[3][4][5][6][7][8] Alternative to these coatings that may show enhanced toughness as happens in bulk composites 9,10 are thermal sprayed mullite/ZrO 2 coatings. Surprisingly, there are few works devoted to these coatings [11][12][13][14] and most of them are produced by plasma spraying the Al 2 O 3 -ZrSiO 4 stoichiometric mixture, which ideally reacts to form a composite of mullite (33.4 mol %) and ZrO 2 (66.6 mol %) phases. Just one of these works 14 develops mullite/ZrO 2 materials from mullite/ZrO 2 mixtures but none produces mullite/ZrO 2 coatings by the low-cost thermal flame spraying method.…”