| Abstract Scope |
The need for low energy processing routes for ceramic powders has never been more pressing, as ceramic manufacturers battle rising energy costs and targets for lowering environmental impacts come ever closer. In addition, in applications where ceramics are included as part of a complex device assembly with other materials, processing temperatures must be lowered to enable device fabrication. Among other processes, flash and cold sintering have emerged as next generation technologies which may meet these requirements to transform a wide variety of ceramic powders to robust bulk materials.
Recent work by our group has focused on understanding the processing conditions required to carry out low energy processes on non-ideal materials including materials which degrade readily under high temperatures, and recycled feedstocks. This talk will describe our work in this area over the past few years including work on flash sintering of the solid-state battery electrolyte material LLZO, and the optimisation of microstructure for this material through use of alternative flash sintering approaches which reduce degradation and inhomogeneities after sintering. These samples are contrasted with others from the same material produced by cold sintering, which with suitable additions was found to enable dense, robust electrolytes with good electrochemical performance. Finally recent work on cold sintering and life cycle analysis of reprocessing silica-based ceramic waste will be described, where we have found that powder particle size distribution has significant impact on the properties of the final bulk ceramic. |