Microstructure and wearability of nano-ZrO2 ferrule for optical fiber connector

ZrO2 ferrule, the core component of the optical fiber connector, plays an important role in the properties of ZrO2 ferrule. In this paper, the nano-sized ZrO2 ceramic powder was prepared by chemical precipitation process. According to this method, ZrOCl2·8HO, water and PEG-6000 was separately selected as the raw material, solvent and additive. Best processing conditions was determined: consistence of ZrO2 was 0.5mol/L, reaction temperature was 80° and sintering temperature was 600°. The ceramic sintering body was prepared at different pressure and temperature with using the nano-sized ceramic powder which were prepared under the best processing conditions. The structure of the nano-sized ZrO2 ceramic powder was characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD) and it proved that nano-sized ZrO2 ceramic powder sintered at 600° was mainly the tetragonal phase; Porosity was characterized by Scanning electron microscope(SEM) and it proved that the porosity of sintering body decreased with the increasing temperature. The wearability was tested on MPX-2000 friction pin-disk testing machine and it proved that within a certain temperature range, wearability increased with the increasing molding pressure. Finally, the best sintering temperature was determined as 1450° and the best molding pressure was determined as 600MPa.