Avinash,

It's been awhile since I thought about ceramics so could be a bit off, but
I seem to recall just heating to within 100C of the original sintering temp
and holding for <30min. This assumes that you have a nearly dense ceramic
body with a surface that's been polished down to sub-micron roughness so
you can actually see the thermal grooving at the grain boundaries.

Masa




> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:45:00 -0800 (PST)
> From: avinash balakrishnan 
> Subject: [mems-talk] Thermal Etching Conditions for Yttria Stabilized
>     Zirconia
> To: mems-talk@memsnet.org
> Message-ID: <20060222234500.65641.qmail@web54313.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Hi all,
>
>       Can any one tell me the thermal etching condition (Temperature
> and Holding time) so that i can see the microstructure of sintered
> zirconia.
>
>
>   Thanks in advance
>
>   Avinash