Effects of the nature of the doping salt and of the thermal pre-treatment and sintering temperature on spark plasma sintering of transparent alumina

Nicolas Roussel (1) , Lucile Lallemant (2) , Bernard Durand (1) , Sophie Guillemet (1) , Jean-Yves Chane Ching (1) , Gilbert Fantozzi (2) , Vincent Garnier (2) , Guillaume Bonnefont (2)

1 CIRIMAT - Centre interuniversitaire de recherche et d'ingenierie des matériaux
2 MATEIS - Matériaux, ingénierie et science [Villeurbanne]

A slurry of a-Al2O3 was doped with Mg, Zr and La nitrates or chlorides, in various amounts in the range 150-500 wt ppm and then freeze-dried to produce nanosized doped powder (~150 nm). The powder was sintered by SPS to yield transparent polycrystalline alpha alumina. The influence of the nature of the doping element and the starting salt, the thermal treatment before sintering and the sintering emperature on the transparency of the ceramics were investigated. The transparency of the ceramics of nanosized Al2O3 was shown to depend mainly on the way the powder was prepared, the nature of the doping salt also had an effect. Finally, a high real inline transmittance, reaching 48.1% was achieved after optimization.

Mots clés: B. Grain size; B. Porosity; C. Optical properties; D. Al2O3; Doping; Spark Plasma Sintering

Domaines: Matériaux et structures en mécanique [physics.class-ph]; Matériaux et structures en mécanique [physics.class-ph]; Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Nicolas Roussel, Lucile Lallemant, Bernard Durand, Sophie Guillemet, Jean-Yves Chane Ching, et al.. Effects of the nature of the doping salt and of the thermal pre-treatment and sintering temperature on spark plasma sintering of transparent alumina. Ceramics International, 2011, vol. 37, pp. 3565-3573. ⟨10.1016/j.ceramint.2011.05.152⟩. ⟨hal-00859670⟩