The effect of manganese oxide on the sintering of steatite-based ceramic was studied. Steatite powder used in this work was doped with varying amounts of manganese oxide-5% to 30% (wt). The green samples were cold-isostatically pressed and pressureless sintered at temperatures ranging from 950C to 1150C using varying holding times. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed no secondary phases detected in any samples regardless of dopant addition and sintering conditions. It was revealed that the bulk density of steatite ceramic increased with manganese oxide when sintering at 1050C. However, sintering at 1100C using 1 minute holding time was found to be the most effective in enhancing the bulk density as well as the Vickers hardness of manganese oxide-doped steatite ceramic.

The sinterability of hydroxyapatite (HA) powder synthesized through a novel wet chemical method (HAp) and a wet mechanochemical method (HAwm) was investigated over a temperature range of 1000oC to 1400oC in terms of phase stability, bulk density, hardness and fracture toughness. The results indicated that the sinterability of HAp powder were significantly better than HAwm powder. Moreover, the XRD traces of HAwm sintered samples showed signs of decomposition into TTCP when sintered at 1300oC and above. Densification of ~98% of theoretical density was attained by HAp compacts at 1100oC while the HAwm compacts exhibited only ~96% of theoretical density even at 1350oC with no significant increase of density at 1400oC. The Vickers hardness of HAp showed increasing trend for temperature range of 1000oC to 1100oC with the compacts attaining HV of ~7 GPa at 1100oC. Subsequently, the hardness decreased with increasing sintering temperature though the value does not dropped below ~5 GPa. Similarly, HAwm compacts showed an increasing trend from 1000oC to 1300oC with the largest HV attained was ~4.57 GPa. Further increased in sintering temperature resulted in the decreased of Vicker’s hardness. Moreover, the HAp samples reached a maximum fracture toughness of ~0.9 MPam1/2 at 1050oC while the HAwm attained maximum KIc of only ~0.7 MPam1/2 at 1300oC.

The aim of this work is to study the phase stability and sinterability of bismuth oxide (Bi2O3) doped HA ranging from 0.05 wt% to 1 wt%. The green samples were sintered in air at temperature ranging from 1000oC to 1400oC. In this experiment, the results from XRD analysis revealed that the stability of HA phase was disrupted when addition of 0.3, 0.5 and 1.0 wt% Bi2O3 were used and when samples sintered above 1100oC, 1000oC and 950oC, respectively. In general, HA containing 0.5 wt% of Bi2O3 and when sintered at 1000oC was found to be beneficial in enhancing densification, Young’s modulus, Vickers hardness and fracture toughness. Throughout the sintering regime, the highest value of relative bulk density of 98.7% was obtained for 0.5 wt% Bi2O3-doped HA when sintered at 1000oC. A maximum Young’s modulus of 119.2 GPa was observed for 0.1 wt% Bi2O3-doped HA when sintered at 1150oC. Additionally, 0.5 wt% Bi2O3-doped HA was able to achieve highest hardness of 6.04 GPa and fracture toughness of 1.21 MPam1/2 at sintering temperature of 1000oC. Furthermore, the Young’s modulus of HA was found to vary linearly with bulk density.