Alumina is an engineering ceramic material with excellent comprehensive properties as well as the inherent shortcoming of the low fracture toughness. Y 2 O 3 -stabilized t-ZrO 2 (TZP) is an effective additive to improve its fracture toughness. In this work, rotary chemical vapor deposition (RCVD) was applied to uniformly coat TZP nanoparticles on α-Al 2 O 3 powder, and then the powder was compacted via spark plasma sintering. The content of TZP increased from 0.56 to 4.7 wt% with increasing the deposition temperature from 500 to 800 °C but decreased at 900 °C. The RCVD-TZP nanoparticles homogeneously surrounded the α-Al 2 O 3 grains and inhibited its growth after sintering. The relative density, fracture toughness and hardness of the ZTA composites had the maximum values of 99.2%, 7.28 ± 0.33 MPa m 1/2 , and 19.5 ± 0.5 GPa at 1500 °C and 4.7 wt% RCVD-TZP, respectively, much higher than the ZTA composites directly mixed with TZP commercial powder.