This book represents the first ever scientific monograph including an in-depth analysis of all major field-assisted sintering techniques. Until now, the electromagnetic field-assisted technologies of materials processing were lacking a systematic and generalized description in one fundamental publication; this work promotes the development of generalized concepts and of comparative analyses in this emerging area of materials fabrication. This book describes modern technologies for the powder processing-based fabrication of advanced materials. New approaches for the development of well-tailored and stable structures are thoroughly discussed. Since the potential of traditional thermo-mechanical methods of material treatment is limited due to inadequate control during processing, the book addresses ways to more accurately control the resultant material's structure and properties by an assisting application of electro-magnetic fields. The book describes resistance sintering, high-voltage consolidation, sintering by low-voltage electric pulses (including spark plasma sintering), flash sintering, microwave sintering, induction heating sintering, magnetic pulse compaction and other field-assisted sintering techniques. Includes an in-depth analysis of all major field-assisted sintering techniques; Explains new techniques and approaches for material treatment; Provides detailed descriptions of spark plasma sintering, microwave sintering, high-voltage consolidation, magnetic pulse compaction, and various other approaches when field-assisted treatment is applied.

Spark Plasma Sintering: Current Status, New Developments and Challenges looks at the progress made in the field of SPS. It includes a review of the scientific mechanisms, materials synthesis and industry applications for this processing technique. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, encompassing topics surrounding the densification mechanism and microstructure evolution, the classification of high-performance materials, a review of numerical simulation, discussions of new technology advances, such as HP-SPS, flash sintering and related challenges. This book will be useful for researchers, engineers and students within the materials science and engineering fields.

Sintering process studies have re-emerged strongly in the past decade due to extensive discussions about the stabilization of nanoparticles and nanostructures, and the development of controlled nanograined bulk materials. This book presents the state-of-art in experiments and theory of novel sintering processes, traditional sintering and grain growth. The scope ranges from powder metallurgy to ceramic and composites processing. The challenges of conventional and novel sintering and grain growth in nanopowders and nanostructures are addressed, being useful for students as well as professionals interested in sintering at the nanoscale.

This book describes spark plasma sintering (SPS) in depth. It addresses fundamentals and material-specific considerations, techniques, and applications across a broad spectrum of materials. The book highlights methods used to consolidate metallic or ceramic particles in very short times. It highlights the production of complex alloys and metal matrix composites with enhanced mechanical and wear properties. Emphasis is placed on the speed of the sintering processes, uniformity in product microstructure and properties, reduced grain growth, the compaction and sintering of materials in one processing step, various materials processing, and high energy efficiency. Current and potential applications in space science and aeronautics, automation, mechanical engineering, and biomedicine are addressed throughout the book.

Sintering is one of the final stages of ceramics fabrication and is used to increase the strength of the compacted material. In the Sintering of Ceramics section, the fabrication of electronic ceramics and glass-ceramics were presented. Especially dielectric properties were focused on. In other chapters, sintering behaviour of ceramic tiles and nano-alumina were investigated. Apart from oxides, the sintering of non-oxide ceramics was examined. Sintering the metals in a controlled atmosphere furnace aims to bond the particles together metallurgically. In the Sintering of Metals section, two sections dealt with copper containing structures. The sintering of titanium alloys is another topic focused in this section. The chapter on lead and zinc covers the sintering in the field of extractive metallurgy. Finally two more chapter focus on the basics of sintering,i.e viscous flow and spark plasma sintering.

Electromagnetic field-assisted sintering techniques have increasingly attracted attention of scientists and technologists. Spark-plasma sintering (SPS) and other field-assisted powder consolidation approaches provide remarkable capabilities to the processing of materials into configurations previously unattainable. Of particular significance is the possibility of using very fast heating rates, which, coupled with the field-assisted mass transport, stand behind the purported ability to achieve high densities during consolidation and to maintain the nanostructure of consolidated materials via these techniques. Potentially, SPS and related technologies have many significant advantages over the conventional powder processing methods, including the lower process temperature, the shorter holding time, dramatically improved properties of sintered products, low manufacturing costs, and environmental friendliness.

Based on the sintering conference held at the Pennsylvania State University, USA, this text presents advances in the application of sintering to the most important industrial materials. It offers results on both solid-state and microphase sintering as well as microstructure evolution, and introduces new applications, processes, materials and solutions to technical problems.

Until recently, ceramic materials were considered unsuitable for optics due to the numerous scattering sources, such as grain boundaries and residual pores. However, in the 1990s the technology to generate a coherent beam from ceramic materials was developed, and a highly efficient laser oscillation was realized. In the future, the technology derived from the development of the ceramic laser could be used to develop new functional passive and active optics. Co-authored by one of the pioneers of this field, the book describes the fabrication technology and theoretical characterization of ceramic material properties. It describes novel types of solid lasers and other optics using ceramic materials to demonstrate the application of ceramic gain media in the generation of coherent beams and light amplification. This is an invaluable guide for physicists, materials scientists and engineers working on laser ceramics.