| Abstract Scope |
Cold sintering is a technology to achieve bulk densification at low temperatures below 300°C, and has been reported for many ceramics. As an early stage development of this technology and elucidation of its mechanism, the first observation of grain growth at low temperature in ZnO showed that cold sintering is based on the same sintering phenomena as conventional sintering with the sintering theory. It is also shown that the use of cold sintering enables the free selection of materials, which is difficult with conventional sintering, and devices with higher characteristics can be fabricated by combining thermoelectric conversion materials with higher characteristics. This paper introduces the details of this process and its mass production for semiconductor devices and MLCCs, which are expected to be used in industrial applications in the future. |