Ceramic Sintering Process

Sintering happens naturally in mineral deposits or as a manufacturing process used with metals ceramics plastics and other materials the atoms in the materials diffuse across the boundaries of the particles fusing the particles.

Ceramic sintering process.

The driving force of sintering process is reduction of surface energy of the particles. As long as the raw material for a particular product is in a powdered form the product can be sintered. During this stage the microstructure of the samples evolves see figure 1. Usually this is done by a sintering process which is a consolidation and densification step of the granular compact through the action of heat.

The sintering process in the ceramic composite is considered to be a solid state sintering process 18. During the sintering process the green compact shrinks by around 40 vol. The novel process can solve the problem of densification of the difficult to sinter ceramic materials providing an effective solution in preparing high density ceramic tools. Dmitri kopeliovich sintering firing of ceramic materials is the method involving consolidation of ceramic powder particles by heating the green compact part to a high temperature below the melting point when the material of the separate particles difuse to the neghbouring powder particles.

The sintering or firing process provides the energy to encourage the individual powder particles to bond or sinter together to remove the porosity present from the compaction stages. Several authors extensively studied the sintering of zta composites. At the end of the sintering process the synthetic graphite powder was still in the powder form and was easy to remove from the sintered body. Full densification is achieved by sintering at temperatures up to 1800 c.

Sintering or frittage is the process of compacting and forming a solid mass of material by heat or pressure without melting it to the point of liquefaction. In general coarsening or grain growth occurs during sintering. Sintering is generally used in the manufacture of ceramic products however the process can be used to fashion metal glass and plastic objects as well as composites and alloys. Sintering is a ubiquitous processing step for manufacturing ceramics for a diverse set of applications.