On the confluence of ultrafast high‐temperature sintering and flash sintering phenomena

Abstract

Ultrafast high‐temperature sintering (UHS) and flash sintering are novel methods for rapid sintering of ceramics, often completed in just a few seconds. Here, we show that both also share two additional features: an abrupt rise in electrical conductivity, which is electronic, and electroluminescence. More fundamentally, both are related to phonon physics where MD calculations have shown that proliferation of phonons at the edge of the Brillouin zone can induce Frenkel pairs without the application of electrical fields. Here, we show that, indeed, heating without the application of electric field, can also induce flash: Rapid heating processes of thin films of an oxide‐salt deposited on silk fibers, with a propane torch, are shown to induce electronic conductivity, electroluminescence, and rapid sintering of the oxide. The discussion in this article harkens back to two inventions, more than a century ago, which can now be related to flash and UHS: (i) the Nernst glow lamp circa 1900, made from zirconia, and (ii) the Welsbach mantle, constituted from ceria doped thorium oxide, in the late nineteenth century. Thus, the confluence between high heating rate and electric field induced flash phenomena links the past to the new. The emerging question is how injection of phonons that has been shown to create Frenkels can further induce high electronic conductivity and electroluminescence in oxides. Both electronic conductivity and luminescence are likely related to the generation of electron–hole pairs.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Mar 03, 2023
Source ID
10.1111/jace.19070

Entities

People

  • Carolina N. Yamada
  • Dietrich E. Wolf
  • Jean‐Marie Lebrun
  • Rishi Raj
  • Shikhar Krishn Jha

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of Colorado Boulder
  • University of Duisburg

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Organic Chemistry
  • Powder metallurgy of Titanium alloys.
  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Graphene