A Perspective on Emerging and Future Sintering Technologies of Ceramic Materials

Abstract

Novel sintering methods have emerged in the recent past years, which have raised great interest in the scientific community. Relying on electric field effects, high heating rates, the use of mechanical pressure, or hydrothermal conditions, they offer fundamental advantages compared to conventional sintering routes like minimizing the energy consumption and enhancing the process efficiency. This perspective aims at explaining these effects in a general way and presenting the status quo of using them for the processing of high‐performing ceramic materials. In detail, this work focuses on flash sintering, ultrafast high‐temperature sintering, spark plasma sintering, cold sintering, and photonic sintering methods based on different light sources. The specificities, potentials, and limitations of each method are compared, especially in the light of a possible industrialization.

Innovations in Electric Current-Assisted Sintering for SOFC: A Review of Advances in Flash Sintering and Ultrafast High-Temperature Sintering

“…These sintering techniques not only reduce sintering temperatures but also significantly shorten the sintering durations. Some examples of sintering techniques include microwave sintering (MWS), spark plasma sintering (SPS), flash sintering (FS), and, more recently, ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS) [29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. Figure 2 displays the process sketches of several typical field-assisted and current-assisted sintering technologies.…”

In situ observation of the multistep process of cold sintering

“…For example, cold sintering has been successfully demonstrated for a wide variety of binary oxide systems, but adaption of the technique to more complex oxide chemistries has proven to be difficult due to incongruent dissolution 33–35 . Additionally, an undeniable advantage that cold sintering has over other novel sintering techniques 36 is that cold sintering can be used to process hard and soft materials together in one step in order to produce novel interfaces that improve properties like breakdown strength and device reliability 9,37 …”

Fabrication and electrochemical properties of nanorod-shaped LiFePO4 using iron powder as the iron source

“…Since the discovery of olivine-type lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO 4 ) by Goodenough et al in 1997 [1], it has been extensively researched as a cathode electrode material for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles due to its high speci c capacity (170 mAh/g), high operating voltage (3.45 V vs Li + /Li), excellent cyclability, low cost, environmental friendly, and inherent thermal safety [2]. However, in comparison to materials such as LiCoO 2 and LiMn 2 O 4 , LiFePO 4 still suffers from the disadvantages of low electronic conductivity and slow Li + diffusion rates [3][4][5]. This drawbacks prevent a further application in large-scale energy storage and highpower electric vehicles (EVs) [6,7].…”