A new ultra-rapid process of flash spark plasma sintering is developed. The idea of flash spark plasma sintering (or flash hot pressing - FHP) stems from the conducted theoretical analysis of the role of thermal runaway phenomena for material processing by flash sintering. The major purpose of the present study is to theoretically analyze the thermal runaway nature of flash sintering and to exp...

The densification behavior and mechanical properties of B4C hot-pressed at 2000°C for 1 h with additions of Al2O3 up to 10 vol% were investigated. Sinterability was greatly improved by the addition of a small amount of Al2O3. The improvement was attributed to the enhanced mobility of elements through the Al2O3 near the melting temperature or a reaction product formed at the grain boundaries. As...

Composite ceramics BaTiO₃/3Y-TZP containing 0 mol %, 3 mol %, 5 mol %, 7 mol %, and 10 mol % BaTiO₃ have been prepared by conventional sintering and spark-plasma sintering (SPS), respectively. Analysis of the XRD patterns and Raman spectra reveal that the phase composition of t-ZrO₂, m-ZrO₂, and BaTiO₃ has been obtained. Our results indicate that SPS can be effective for the decrease in grain s...

Yttrium silicate coating[5, 6] is a promising candidate for oxidation resistant coating for its low oxygen diffusion coefficient and similar thermal expansion coefficient with silicon carbide. Webster et. al.[7] had prepared yttrium silicate coating on C/SiC using Y2O3/SiO2 slips by slip casting and sintering. The selected sintering parameters were 3 h at 1600 °C in flowing argon. The coating c...

In Direct Metal Laser Sintering objects are created by sequential sintering loose metal powder particles by means of laser technology. When the laser sintering process involves temperature gradients, thermal stresses develop. Corresponding residual stresses induce warping of the densified structure leading to unacceptable tolerance losses. This paper examines the role of laser beam scan pattern...

This paper investigates fabrication of functional thick metal films using simultaneous laser sintering and patterning along with the fundamental physical phenomena that govern the laser sintering process. The effects of the processing parameters on the quality of the fabricated components are investigated through a heat transfer analysis. We show that our process has potentials for metallizatio...

The sintering behavior of gadolinia-doped ceria powders was studied by the master sintering curve (MSC). Dilatometric analyses of powders produced by a soft chemical method were performed to provide the experimental data set for the construction of the MSC. The assumed model provided good fittings of the MSC and the activation energy for the sintering of Ce1-xGdxO3-d, with x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, and...

Spark plasma sintering (SPS) is currently widely applied to existing alloys as a means of further enhancing the alloys' figure of merit. However, the determination of the optimal sintering condition is challenging in the SPS process. This report demonstrates a systematic way to independently optimize the Seebeck coefficient S and the ratio of electrical to thermal conductivity (σ/κ) and thus ac...

(Ti,Zr)C powder was sintered with WC-Co following an industrial process, including an isotherm at 1410 °C. A series of interrupted sintering trials was performed with the aim of studying the sintering behavior and the microstructural evolution during both solid-state and liquid-state sintering. Reference samples, using the same elemental compositions but with the starting components TiC and ZrC...