Densification of ceramics by flash sintering ~elementary processes of mass transport under electric fields~

Abstract

Recently, a flash sintering method, which is one of field assisted sintering technique (FAST), has been developed. In the flash sintering method, lower sintering temperature and shorter sintering time can be realized using a flash event showing a spike of specimen electric current at a critical furnace temperature. The flash sintering method has been applied to many kinds of ceramics so far, its usefulness is being clarified. Improvement of techniques and theoretical analysis for the flash sintering method will be progressed. And it can be considered that the flash sintering method will be spreading as a new sintering one, as in spark plasma sintering (SPS) method, in near future. In this paper, we summarize the outline of the flash sintering method including control parameters and the recent researches on the elementary processes related to large-scale mass transfer occurring under application of electric fields.