| Scope |
Recently there has been a convergence of “electrification” in industry (EVs for example) and field assisted methods for the sintering of materials, where ceramics and metals are sintered not in large furnaces running continuously but by injection of power directly to the workpieces as needed. These methods include microwaves, SPS, electro-discharge-sintering, ultra-heating-rate-sintering and last but not the least flash sintering. These methods offer phenomenal energy efficiency since all the power (like in electric motors) goes directly into the workpieces. Sintering is often accomplished in well under one minute, and even a few seconds. These methods enable sintering of multi-component materials which can be, conventionally, difficult because of fugitive species (for example LLZO for ceramic electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries). It is now time to consider how one or more of these methods can advance into manufacturing. Often these methods require special control of process parameters in real time, at sub-second time scale, which must be built into a hardware-software interface. This latter feature offers an entre into AI and ML for our community. Abstracts will be invited from those working in any of the above mentioned methods and well as from the cyber-community. |