Spark plasma sintering: A powerful tool to develop new silicon nitride-based materials

Spark plasma sintering of Si3N4/multilayer graphene composites

“…On heating the samples innumerable microdischarges are generated among the particles to be consolidated on the effect of the time varying electric pulses. Compared to other sintering methods, SPS allows much faster heating rates and shorter sintering times, accompanied with commonly lower sintering temperatures [18]. Although, there is still a harsh dispute over the exact mechanism of the discharge generation, the benefit of this method on the microstructure of the sintered pieces and on the shortness of the process is indisputable.…”

Effect of single-walled carbon nanotubes on thermal and electrical properties of silicon nitride processed using spark plasma sintering

“…Recently, SPS has been shown to be a very powerful tool to develop functionally graded and MWNT based nanocomposites. Belmonte et al 31 have shown that they can process high density nanocomposites and show that SPS can be used to limit MWNT degradation at temperature and that SPS is a powerful tool to develop silicon nitride with controlled microstructures. 32 The goal of this paper is to investigate the effect of SWNTs on the electrical and thermal properties of Si 3 N 4 after densification using SPS.…”

Joining of dissimilar materials

“…The physics of the process are not yet fully understood however, and the existence of plasma in the sintering process has been questioned [103]. SPS has thus by some been renamed pulsed electric current sintering (PECS) [29].…”