Abstract
The flash sintering behavior of yttria-stabilized zirconia/alumina composites was investigated to understand the role of the fundamental processing and testing parameters (electric field intensity, electric current limit, thermal insulation, homogeneity and dispersion of the two phases) on densification. A strong relation between the composite compositions and the electric parameters needed to promote flash sintering is revealed. Interestingly, the composite preparation method, which affects the two-phases dispersion homogeneity, was shown to have a relevant effect on the flash onset conditions, where the more homogeneous material is more difficult to be flashed. Moreover, the use of a simple thermal insulation system around the green body allowed to improve the final density of the composites under constant electric current.
Highlights
Flash sintering (FS) is a novel field-assisted sintering technology [1,2,3,4] where an electric field is directly applied to a ceramic green body while it is heated up within a conventional furnace
The flash event is signaled by a non-linear power surge whose onset temperature depends on the applied electric field and on the composite composition
To check our results a flash experiment was carried out on 15 vol.% Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ)/85 vol.% Al2 O3 mixture produced by milling the ceramic powders in toluene using a Turbula mixer
Summary
Flash sintering (FS) is a novel field-assisted sintering technology [1,2,3,4] where an electric field is directly applied to a ceramic green body while it is heated up within a conventional furnace. The flash transition is accompanied by a bright glowing and a drop in the electrical resistivity which are considered a footprint of the process [4,5,6] Such amazing effect, which changes the sintering time form 104 s to 101 s range, has attracted a relevant scientific interest aiming at unraveling the physical and chemical mechanisms behind the phenomenon [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. Several researchers focused on the application of the process to different class of ceramics employing commercially-available spark plasma sintering [26,29,30,31,32] and microwave sintering [33,34] equipment
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