Kinetics mechanism of microwave sintering in ceramic materials

Based on the traditional sintering model incorporating the characteristic of microwave sintering, the ionic conductance diffusion mechanism in microwave sintering was studied. A flat-ball model was presented to describe the kinetics process in microwave sintering, and was applied to the sintering process of TZP and ZrO₂-Al₂O₃ ceramics. The results indicate that the shrinkage rate of materials in microwave sintering is proportional to t ^2/3 and r ^−4/3, respectively, where t is the sintering time and r is the particle radius. Whereas, the shrinkage rate of materials in conventional sintering is proportional to sintering time t ^2/5. Our model suggests that microwave sintering is faster than conventional sintering, which shows a good agreement with the experimental observation in sintering process of TZP and ZrO₂-Al₂O₃. Supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (Grant No. 50332010) and the National Key Technology Research and Development Program for Resource and Environment of China (Grant Nos. 2006BAB12B03, 2006BAB12B05)