Alumina Based Ceramics: Microwave Fabrication and Properties Development

The enhancement of sintering rates and other solid state reactions during microwave heating on a variety of ceramics have been reported in literatures. These empirical observations of microwave enhancement have been broadly called the “microwave effect�. However, there has been little published work which directly compares the compositional dependence and green sample fabrication on the properties developed by microwave effect on alumina ceramics. Therefore, this research proposal designs to conduct a series of experimental to investigate the effects of the compositional dependence and green sample fabrication on the properties developed by microwave effect on alumina ceramics by using 2.45 GHz microwave power. And to study the effects of green samples, biaxial pressed alumina samples are to be prepared by pressing at different pressures. It is known that the mechanisms responsible for the decrement in sintering may attribute to decrease in microwave effect or different the transport path, such as volume diffusion mechanism, instead of mainly grain boundary diffusion, which is usually reported in microwave sintering. This leads to requirement for further development such that microwaves preferred heating grain boundary areas are directed to heating within the grains.