Flash sintering makes ceramics more ductile and durable

Ceramics are mechanically strong but tend to fracture suddenly when slightly strained under a load unless exposed to high temperatures.

Purdue University’s new flash sintering process adds an electric field to the conventional sintering process used to form bulk components from ceramics and helps make them more ductile and durable.

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“We have been able to show that even at room temperatures, ceramics sintered with the electric field surprisingly deform plastically before fracture when compressed at high strain,” said Haiyan Wang, the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering in Purdue’s College of Engineering.

A study published in Science Advances demonstrates that applying an electric field to the formation of ceramics makes the material almost as easily reshaped as metal at room temperature. The Purdue team specifically applied its technique to titanium dioxide, which is widely used as a white pigment.