Zirconium dioxide of Mars to provide both fuel and oxidizer that could be used as a store of chemical energy for use with surface transportation on Mars. Carbon monoxide/oxygen engines have been suggested for early surface transportation use as both carbon monoxide and oxygen can be straightforwardly produced by zirconia electrolysis without requiring use of any of the Martian water resources to obtain hydrogen, which would be needed for the production of methane or any hydrogen-based fuels. Zirconia is also a potential high-k dielectric material with potential applications as an insulator in transistors. Zirconia is also employed in the deposition of optical
Zirconium and potassium zirconium fluoride in an iron tube. The "crystal bar process" (also known as the "Iodide Process"), discovered by Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer in 1925, was the first industrial process for the commercial production of metallic zirconium. It involves the formation and subsequent thermal decomposition of zirconium tetraiodide, and was superseded in 1945 by the much cheaper Kroll process developed by William Justin Kroll, in which zirconium tetrachloride is reduced by magnesium: Approximately 900,000 tonnes of zirconium ores were mined in 1995, mostly as zircon. Most zircon is used directly in high-temperature applications. This