Preparation of High-Quality Zirconia Fibers by Super-High Rotational Centrifugal Spinning of Inorganic Sol

A novel inorganic sol-gel method for preparation of high-quality zirconia fibers was proposed, with starting from the reaction between ZrOCl2 · 8H2O (ZOC) and H2O2. The spinning solution with good spinnability was obtained by controlling the mole ratio of H2O2/ZOC to 4 for reaction, and the mole ratio of Cl/Zr remained close to 1 in the reacted solution. The double chain structure of the inorganic polyzirconium molecule in the spinning solution was determined by elemental analysis and FT-IR. The precursor fibers were obtained by using a novel 30,000 rpm centrifugal spinning apparatus. Being heat-treated to 1300°C under steam atmosphere, the precursor fibers transformed to zirconia fibers which had relatively high strength and good flexibility, with length of more than 10 cm and diameters of 5–10 µm.