The diversity of combustion synthesis processing: a review

The harnessing of heat emanating from powder-based exothermic reactions to produce advanced materials has been around for many decades, and is manifested in the process of combustion synthesis (CS). A plethora of work has been published on the topic covering fundamental aspects of the process for a large number of material systems. Over time, CS has been combined with other processes and effects to potentially improve on conventionally produced CS products and alleviate some of the inherent disadvantages of CS. This article discusses processing aspects of CS, and provides a review of CS-related hybrid processes with the intent to exemplify the diversity of CS processing. Approaches such as reactant microstructural design, reactive bulk deformation/compaction processes, reactive casting, laser-assisted CS, activation techniques (field/current, mechanical, microwave), and unconventional heat treatments are discussed together with other methods.