Spark Plasma Sintering of Alumina

A systematic study of various spark plasma sintering (SPS) parameters, namely temperature, holding time, heating rate, pressure, and pulse sequence, was conducted to investigate their effect on the densification, grain-growth kinetics, hardness, and fracture toughness of a commercially available submicrometer-sized Al₂O₃ powder. The obtained experimental data clearly show that the SPS process enhances both densification and grain growth. Thus, Al₂O₃ could be fully densified at a much lower temperature (1150°C), within a much shorter time (minutes), than in more conventional sintering processes. It is suggested that the densification is enhanced in the initial part of the sintering cycle by a local spark-discharge process in the vicinity of contacting particles, and that both grain-boundary diffusion and grain-boundary migration are enhanced by the electrical field originating from the pulsed direct current used for heating the sample. Both the diffusion and the migration that promote the grain growth were found to be strongly dependent on temperature, implying that it is possible to retain the original fine-grained structure in fully densified bodies by avoiding a too high sintering temperature. Hardness values in the range 21–22 GPa and fracture toughness values of 3.5 ± 0.5 MPa·m^1/2 were found for the compacts containing submicrometer-sized Al₂O₃ grains.