No Arabic abstract
Volume shrinkage, grain growth, and their interaction are major events occurring during free sintering of ceramics. A high temperature sintering dilatometry curve is influenced by these both phenomena. It is shown that the continuum theory of sintering can be utilized in the format enabling the extraction of the maximum amount of information on the densification and grain growth kinetics based on a simple dilatometry test. We present here the capability of such a fast approach (Dilatometry based Grain growth Assessment DGA) utilized for the modeling of sintering and grain growth of zirconia.
Sintering is a key step in the processing of high performance ceramics. Both the density and the grain size play a crucial role on the ceramic sintering kinetics and the final material properties. The master sintering curve (MSC) is a well-known tool for exploring sintering models kinetics. However, the conventional MSC theory assumes a unique sintering trajectory, while our study on MgAl2O4 spinel shows dissimilar growth response. Parks MSC theory has been applied and compared with the conventional MSC approach for obtaining the activation energy with and without dissimilar grain growth trajectories.
A thermodynamically consistent phase-field model is developed to study the non-isothermal grain coalescence during the sintering process, with a potential application to the simulation in unconventional sintering techniques, e.g. spark plasma sintering, field-assisted sintering, and selective laser sintering, where non-equilibrium and high temperature gradient exist. In the model, order parameters are adopted to represent the bulk and atmosphere/pore region, as well as the crystallographic orientations. Based on the entropy analysis, the temperature-dependent free energy density is developed, which includes contributions from the internal energy (induced by the change of temperature and order parameters) and the order parameter related configurational entropy. The temperature-dependent model parameters are determined by using the experimental data of surface and grain boundary energies and interface width. From laws of thermodynamics, the kinetics for the order parameters and the order-parameter-coupled heat transfer are derived. The model is numerically implemented by the finite element method. Grain coalescence from two identical particles shows that non-isothermal condition leads to the unsymmetric morphology and curved grain boundary due to the gradients of on-site surface and grain-boundary energies induced by the local temperature inhomogeneity. More simulations on the non-isothermal grain coalescence from two non-identical and multiple particles present the temporal evolution of grain shrinkage/growth, neck growth, and porosity, demonstrating the capability and versatility of the model. It is anticipated that the work could provide a contribution to the research community of unconventional sintering techniques that can be used to model the non-isothermal related microstructural features.
We demonstrate a facile method to produce crystallographically textured, macroporous materials using a combination of modified ice templating and templated grain growth (TGG). The process is demonstrated on alumina and the lead-free piezoelectric material sodium potassium niobate. The method provides macroporous materials with aligned, lamellar ceramic walls which are made up of crystallographically aligned grains. Each method showed that the ceramic walls present a long-range order over the entire sample dimensions and have crystallographic texture as a result of the TGG process. We also present a modification of the March-Dollase equation to better characterize the overall texture of materials with textured but slightly misaligned walls. The controlled crystallographic and morphologic orientation at two different length scales demonstrated here can be the basis of multifunctional materials.
Single crystal metal films on insulating substrates are attractive for microelectronics and other applications, but they are difficult to achieve on macroscopic length scales. The conventional approach to obtaining such films is epitaxial growth at high temperature using slow deposition in ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Here we describe a different approach: sputter deposition at modest temperatures followed by annealing to induce secondary grain growth. We show that polycrystalline as-deposited Cu on alpha-Al2O3(0001) can be transformed into Cu(111) with centimeter-sized grains. Employing optical microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and electron backscatter diffraction to characterize the films before and after annealing, we find a particular as-deposited grain structure that promotes the growth of giant grains upon annealing. To demonstrate one potential application of such films, we grow graphene by chemical vapor deposition on wafers of annealed Cu and obtain epitaxial graphene grains of 0.2 mm diameter.
We determine the non-equilibrium grain size distribution during the crystallization of a solid in $d$ dimensions at fixed thermodynamic conditions, for the random nucleation and growth model, and in absence of grain coalescence. Two distinct generalizations of the theory established earlier are considered. A closed analytic expression of the grain size distribution useful for experimental studies is derived for anisotropic growth rates. The main difference from the isotropic growth case is the appearance of a constant prefactor in the distribution. The second generalization considers a Gaussian source term: nuclei are stable when their volume is within a finite range determined by the thermodynamics of the crystallization process. The numerical results show that this generalization does not change the qualitative picture of our previous study. The generalization only affects quantitatively the early stage of crystallization, when nucleation is dominant. The remarkable result of these major generalizations is that the non-equilibrium grain size distribution is robust against anisotropic growth of grains and fluctuations of nuclei sizes.