Here we investigate the possibility of adding zirconia to nacre-like alumina in order to improve its mechanical properties, work which follows a feasibility study carried out in a PhD thesis . Zirconia micro-platelets are not commercially available, we thus focus here on using zirconia particles to reinforce a nacre-like alumina made of alumina platelets. The challenge is to disperse homogeneously the zirconia particles at the interface of alumina platelets, while preserving the anisotropic and oriented structure of the nacre-like alumina. We investigate several strategies for the addition of zirconia, using either zirconia precursors or zirconia particles.