ABSTRACT A novel coprecipitation method was used to prepare nanosized MgO‐stabilized ZrO 2 (Mg‐PSZ) powders in this study. The semistable zirconia doped with 8mol% of magnesium oxide was selected as the target of the finished product, and ethanol was introduced into the solution system to produce precipitation by using the characteristics of sulfate radical and zirconium ion in the alcohol system. When the proportion of alcohol in the solution is 60%, the best nanosized powder is obtained. The volume density of 5.75 g·cm −3 , the highest conductivity of 0.00499 S·cm −1 , and the lowest activation energy of 0.82 eV at 950°C were obtained after sintering. The problem of hard agglomeration caused by anions in the process of preparing Mg‐PSZ powder by traditional liquid‐phase method was solved, because zirconium sulfate was used as the raw material. The introduction of ethanol can effectively control the secondary agglomeration behavior of the powder in the precipitation process. The experimental results show that the preparation method has a significant improvement on the secondary agglomeration behavior of the powders, which directly affects the density and electrochemical properties of the sintered samples.
Xie et al. (Sun,) studied this question.