Thermal analyses applied to ceramic nanopowders: from synthesis to sintering

The free sintering of ceramic powders into fully dense nanostructured materials is still a challenging process, even more complex when nanostructured transition alumina is used as starting powder. In this paper, biphasic (Alumina–YAG) and triphasic (Alumina–YAG–ZrO₂) composite powders were produced by doping the same nanocrystalline transition alumina with inorganic precursors of the second-phases, which were subsequently yielded under controlled thermal treatments. The added dopants significantly increased both the θ- to α-phase transformation and the sintering temperatures, making even more difficult the retention of the starting nanometric grain size into the final dense materials. Thermal analyses (such as TG–DTA and dilatometry) are here used to support most of the ceramic processing steps involved in a successful elaboration of the desired ultra-fine structures. In fact, the thermal pre-treatments of the doped powders were set up on the ground of the DTA–TG curves whereas the dilatometric analyses were exploited to design optimised sintering cycles, through which the green bodies were successfully consolidated into fully dense materials, characterised by highly homogeneous and tailored micro/nanostructures.