| Abstract Scope |
Numerous research activities are trying to identify processes with limited environmental impact and energy consumption to produce ceramics. Among these, flash sintering appears promising although its application at an industrial level still requires extensive work. An area where the above-mentioned issue is even more problematic is that of high-temperature ceramics, which can be typically consolidated only at very high temperature, under inert atmosphere, under the action of significant pressures or through the addition of additives. In the present work, the application of flash sintering on tungsten carbide, zirconium diboride and their composites is presented. Such materials behave like metals from an electrical point of view and therefore do not show the well know thermal runaway phenomenon when subjected to the simultaneous effect of temperature and electric field as observed in most ceramics. In addition, their chemical nature makes them prone to oxidize at high temperature in non-protecting environment. The conditions are discussed here to achieve high density and no oxidation by the flash sintering approach with the aim to identify possible evolution of the process to real applications and actual issues which need further investigations. |