Spark plasma and conventional sintering of ZrO2-TiN composites: A comparative study on the microstructure and mechanical properties

Abstract

Spark plasma sintering (SPS) is an extremely fast solidification technique for compounds that are difficult to sinter within the material group metals, ceramics or composites. SPS uses a uniaxial pressure and a very rapid heating cycle to consolidate these materials. This direct way of heating allows the application of very high heating and cooling rates, enhancing densification over grain growth promoting diffusion mechanisms allowing maintaining the intrinsic properties of nanopowders in their fully dense products. The ZrO2-TiN cermets prepared by SPS processing achieves the enhanced mechanical properties with the hardness of 15.1 GPa and the fracture toughness of 9.1 MPa· m1/2 in comparison to standard reference ZrO2-TiN material.