Sintering of green samples of alumina produced by ice-templating was followed in situ in an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) up to temperatures as high as 1375°C. These alumina samples with well-defined architectures are of great interest in the field of materials science due to their high specific strength (especially in compression), low density and adaptable porosity. For th...

Nano Al₂O₃ polyamide composites are evaluated for processing by selective laser sintering. A thermal characterization of the polymer composite powders allowed us to establish the possible initial settings. Initial experiments are conducted to identify the most suitable combinations of process parameters. Based on the results of the initial trials, more promising ranges of different process para...

Fabrication of mechanically competent bioactive scaffolds is a great challenge in bone tissue engineering. In this paper, β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) scaffolds were successfully fabricated by selective laser sintering combined with furnace sintering. Bioglass 45S5 was introduced in the process as liquid phase in order to improve the mechanical and biological properties. The results showed th...

Copper is an interesting material for printed electronics inks because, for example, of its good conductivity and lower raw material price compared to silver. However, post-processing Cu inks is challenging because of non-conductive copper oxide. In this work, inkjet-printed Cu nanoparticle structures were sintered on a polyimide substrate with a continuous-wave 808-nm diode laser. Laser sinter...

The sintering of hardmetal in the solid state is studied. The influence of the WC particle size on the sintering kinetics, the role of the binder phase in the densification process and how sintering depends on the heating conditions are investigated. It is observed that alloys with different WC particle size show quite different structural evolution during sintering, although the densification ...

The interface atomic structure was proposed to have a critical effect on the microstructure evolution during sintering of ceramic materials. In liquid-phase sintering, spherical grains show the normal grain growth behavior without exception, while angular grains often grow abnormally. The coarsening process of spherical grains with a disordered or rough interface atomic structure is diffusion-c...

An elemental powder sintering (EPS) technique has been developed for the synthesis of porous NiTi alloy, in which Ni and Ti powders are used as the reactants and TiH2 powder is added as a pore-forming agent and active agent. Effects of various experimental parameters (sintering temperature, sintering time, and TiH2 content) on the porosity, pore size and pore distribution as well as phase compo...

A PM approach is investigated in the context of extremely fine low temperature bainitic steels with a reasonable combination of ultimate tensile strength and uniform elongation. The strategy consists of three steps. First, ball milling is used for mechanical alloying and to create a large density of interfaces prior to sintering. In the second step, spark plasma sintering is used as a rapid con...

Aluminum metal matrix composites (AMMCs) are light-weight materials having wide-spread use in the automobile and aerospace industries due to their attractive physical and mechanical properties. The promising mechanical properties of AMMCs are ascribed to the size and distribution of the reinforcement, as well as to the grain size of the matrix. Microwave rapid sintering involves internal heatin...

This paper investigates thermal modelling of the selective laser sintering process for amorphcus polycarbonate powders. The aim is to develop a simulation for process accuracy and control which are key areas of developement for the new layer manufacturing rapid prototyping technologies. A state-of-the-art adaptive mesh 2 0 finite difference code is used simultaneously to consider heating and si...