Relation between coarsening and densification in solid-state sintering of ceramics: experimental test on superfine zirconia powder compacts

Coarsening (including grain growth and pore growth) and densification behavior of superfine Y-TZP and YSZ powder compacts in the intermediate stage were investigated. It has been found that grain growth in the compacts is basically not affected by the compaction properties, and pore growth is driven by both grain growth and densification. Grain growth alone leads to size-proportional pore growth, and densification results in pore shrinkage. The relation between grain size and density is analyzed to be linear when grain growth and densification are believed to be driven by different stresses under an identical diffusion process. Both theoretical and experimental results show that compaction properties and the heating rate do not alter this linear relation between grain size and density but influence the slope of the linear relation. Larger dihedral angle, higher green density, and narrower particle and pore size distributions are found favorable for the achievement of the grain size-density trajectory with promoted densification and minimized grain growth.