  A recent report [S. Deville et al., J. Am. Ceram. Soc., 86(12), 2225 (2003)]
has shown the new possibilities offered by atomic force microscopy (AFM) to
investigate martensitic transformation induced relief in zirconia. In this
paper, we studied qualitatively the surface relief resulting from martensitic
tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation in yttria and ceria-doped
zirconia by AFM. AFM appears as a very powerful tool to investigate martensite
relief with a great precision. The phenomenological theory of martensitic
crystallography could be succesfully applied to explain all the observed
features. The formation conditions of the martensite are discussed, as well as
ways of accommodating locally the transformation strain, i.e.
self-accommodating variant pairs and microcracking. Variants growth sequences
are observed. These observations bring new insights and explanations on the
transformation initiation and propagation sequences.
