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Abstract This work investigates the effects of doping on both the thermodynamics and kinetics of sintering in aluminum‐doped yttrium oxide nanoparticles (Al‐doped Y2O3), with the objective of delineating their interdependent effects at different stages of the process. Direct measurements of surface and grain boundary energies using differential scanning calorimetry showed that Al‐doping decreases both interfacial energies, leading to an increase in dihedral angle (from 152.7 ± 5.6° to 165.8 ± 5.5°) and, therefore, sintering stress. Densification and grain growth analyses showed that despite this increase in sintering stress, the onset of sintering is delayed for the Al‐doped samples, demonstrating that a large dihedral angle is a necessary but not sufficient condition for densification. The measurements of activation energies for densification and grain growth point out that Al suppresses grain boundary mobility by increasing the activation energy from 400 to 448 kJ/mol, hindering densification at the intermediate stages of sintering. At temperatures above 1150℃, grain growth is activated in the Al‐doped samples, which rapidly releases the accumulated sintering stress and exhibits a higher densification rate than in undoped Y2O3. This study demonstrates a complex interconnectivity between the thermodynamics and kinetics at different temperature ranges of sintering and reinforces the need for a comprehensive description for proper design of sintering aids.
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Anisothermal densification kinetics of the cold sintering process below 150 °C
Cold sintering is an emerging non-equilibrium process methodology that densifies ceramic powders at significantly reduced temperatures. This study proposes a fundamental framework to investigate its densification kinetics. By controlling four densification process variables including the transient chemistry, sintering temperature, uniaxial pressure and dwell time, the anisothermal sintering kinetics of highly densified ZnO is identified and phenomenologically modeled for its relative activation energetics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1728634
- PAR ID:
- 10149613
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Materials Chemistry C
- Volume:
- 8
- Issue:
- 17
- ISSN:
- 2050-7526
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 5668 to 5672
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d0tc00395f
