Cold sintering and electric characterization of ZnO-BaTiO3 composites

Abstract

Abstract The sintering is an essential step in the processing of ceramics materials. A number of researchers have reported new techniques for sintering. However, in general, the process still demands high temperatures. This paper reports the results of the cold sintering of ZnO-BaTiO3 composites. The microstructural, structural, and electric properties of the composite were studied. We obtained high densities (>95%) for pure ZnO and for the composition with 10 wt% of BaTiO3 at a low temperature of sintering (250 °C/1 h). The increase of BaTiO3 content reduced the grain size and degraded the sinterability of ZnO. The crystalline structure was investigated by X-ray diffraction and confirmed the separation of the phases after the cold sintering. The BaTiO3 added in the composite reduced the values of conductivity, permittivity, and also the dielectric loss.

Keywords

• ceramics
• cold sintering
• impedance spectroscopy
• dielectrics