Kinetics of Initial Sintering of Vacuum-Reduced Titanium Dioxide

Observations of sphere-to-plate bonding of vacuum-reduced monocrystalline rutile have been carried out over the temperature range 1200° to 1275°C. The rate law governing the interfacial growth between sphere and plate indicates that the predominant mechanism of material transport in this sintering process is volume diffusion. In the light of the reasonably satisfactory agreement between the oxygen self-diffusion coefficients calculated from the present sintering data and those directly observed by Haul and Just utilizing an isotopic exchange technique, it is likely that oxygen ion diffusion is the rate-determining step in the sintering experiments described.