New Research Published: Enhancing the Durability of Transparent Spinel Ceramics

We are excited to share that our recent study, titled “Improving Contact Damage Resistance of Spinel Translucent Ceramics through a Multi-Layer Design,” has been accepted for publication in the prestigious Journal of the European Ceramic Society.

This innovative research, led by Dr. Ali Najafzadeh, represents a collaborative effort with Montanuniversität Leoben (Austria) and CEITEC (Czech Republic). It explores an  approach to improving the mechanical resilience of transparent spinel ceramics, offering promising advancements for their use in applications where contact damage resistance is critical.

The brittle nature of transparent spinel ceramics has long been a barrier to their wider adoption as alternatives to glasses and single crystals. In this work, we:

• Designed and tested a multi-layer architecture by embedding alumina layers within spinel ceramics.
• Enhanced contact damage resistance using finite element simulations to understand stress distribution and crack initiation.
• Achieved a ~70% improvement in load-bearing capability before crack initiation compared to monolithic spinel ceramics.

This study reflects the power of collaboration and innovation. We gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the EU NextGenerationEU, through Slovakia’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (Project No. 09I03-03-V04-00196), which made this research possible.

For more details, the full article is available online: Read the publication

We thank all our collaborators and supporters for their contributions to this significant advancement in materials science.

Fig. 1. : Schematics showing the loading configuration in Hertzian indentation tests in (a) SAS, and (b) ASA laminate. The arrows indicate tensile (yellow) and compressive (white) in-plane residual stresses.