Fabrication of Dense Nanostructured Bulk Ceramics by Means of Spark-Plasma-Sintering (SPS) Processing

Abstract:

In order to fabricate fine-grained and dense nanoceramic materials, the effect of spark-plasma-sintering (SPS) conditions was examined in MgAl₂O₄ spinel as a reference material. The SPS conditions, such as heating rate and loading temperature, strongly affected the microstructures. Although the density can be improved with decreasing the heating rate to less than 10 °C/min, it requires a long processing time. In order to fully utilize the high heating rate that is a primary advantage of the SPS technique, load controlling is very effective to achieve high density with maintaining fine grain size. An increase in the loading temperature during SPS processing can reduce the residual porosity in a spinel even at the widely used high heating rate of 100 °C/min. This suggests that for the SPS processing in ceramics, the load controlling is an important factor as well as the heating rate and sintering temperature.

• Periodical: Materials Science Forum (Volumes 838-839)
• Pages: 225-230
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.838-839.225
• Online since: January 2016
• Authors: Koji Morita*, Byung Nam Kim, Hidehiro Yoshida, Keijiro Hiraga, Yoshio Sakka
• Keywords: Forming, MgAl₂O₄ Spinel, Nanoceramics, Spark-Plasma-Sintering (SPS)

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