We show that BiFeO3, that is electrically homogeneous, is a good insulator, and has a low dielectric constant (the properties desired in its applications), can be produced by flash sintering, which is nominally difficult to achieve by conventional and spark plasma sintering processes. The flash-sintered specimens had a uniform microstructure with a nanometric grain size…
Constant Rate Thermal Analysis (CRTA) method implies controlling the temperature in such a way that the reaction rate is maintained constant all over the process. This method allows determining simultaneously both the kinetic parameters and the kinetic model from a single experiment as the shape of the CRTA -T curves strongly depends on the kinetic…
3YTZP matrix composites containing 2.5 vol% of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) were fabricated by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) at 1250°C, following different processing routines with the aim of optimizing the SWCNTs dispersion throughout the ceramic matrix. Microstructural characterization of the as-fabricated samples has been performed by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The specimens have been…
The use of RE2Si2O7 materials as environmental barrier coatings (EBCs) and in the sintering process of advanced ceramics demands a precise knowledge of the coefficient of thermal expansion of the RE2Si2O7. High-temperature X-ray diffraction (HTXRD) patterns were collected on different RE2Si2O7 polymorphs, namely A, G, α, β, γ, and δ, to determine the changes in…
Phase-pure powders of stoichiometric BiFeO3 have been prepared by mechanosynthesis. Ceramics sintered by either conventional heating in air or spark plasma sintering (SPS) followed by oxidative anneal in air are highly insulating at room temperature with resistivity, extrapolated from the Arrhenius plots, of ~1016 Ωcm and activation energy 1.15(2) eV, comparable with those of a…
The synthesis of multicomponent ceramic materials in the titanium-diboride-carbide-nitride-carbonitride system by the mechanochemical process known as the mechanically induced self-sustaining reaction (MSR) was investigated. Ceramic composite powders containing TiB 2and TiC, TiN or TiC xN 1-xwere prepared from a blended mixture of the elements by exploiting the highly exothermic nature of the formation reactions. The…
In this work, spark plasma sintering (SPS) of 10 mol% CeO 2-doped ZrO 2 nanocrystalline powders, obtained by a two-step synthesis procedure, allows the preparation of fully densified nanostructured ceramics. The CeO 2-ZrO 2 powders with particle size below 100 nm are obtained after CeO 2 deposition on hydrothermally synthesized ZrO 2 particles by the…
Rare-earth (RE) disilicates, of general formula RE2Si 2O7, are one of the products of the chemical reaction between RE (elements), which are actinide simulators, and the silicates used in the engineered barrier systems of deep geological repositories (DGPs). The aim of this paper is to establish the stability range of the disilicate phase as function…
Pyrophyllite is a raw material of significant interest due to its large number of applications. Most of these applications require a thermal transformation of pyrophyllite; this thermal transformation implies the release of structural OH groups and the formation of new phases. In this paper, we report on the dehydroxylation of pyrophyllite and the reversibility of…
The enhanced high-temperature creep resistance in alumina/single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) composites has been attributed to the unprecedented grain-boundary structure of these composites, where the SWNTs bundles segregated at the alumina grain boundaries partially impede grain-boundary sliding. In this study, the effect of SWNTs distributions at alumina grain boundaries on the creep behavior of alumina/SWNTs composites…