Effect of Multi-Sized Powder Mixture on Solid Casting and Sintering of Alumina

The slip casting process is widely used to make green bodies from ceramic slips into dense compacts with homogeneous microstructure. However, stress may be generated inside the green body during drying, and can lead to cracking and bending during sintering. When starting from the spherical powders with mono-size distribution to make the close packed body, interstitial voids on octahedral and tetrahedral sites are formed. In this research, experiments were carried out with powders of three size types (host powder (H), octahedral void filling powder (O) and tetrahedral void filling powder (T)) controlled for average particle size by milling from two commercial alumina powders. Slips were prepared using three different powder batches from H only, H+O or H+O+T mixed powders. After manufacturing green compacts by solid-casting, compacts were dried at constant temperature and humidity and sintered at 1650°C. Alumina samples fabricated from the multi-sized powder mixture had improved compacted and sintered densities. Key words: Al2O3, Slip casting, Milling, Sintering, Powders