Rapidly fabricating Y <sub>2</sub> O <sub>3</sub> transparent ceramics at low temperature by SPS with mesoporous powder
Hailiang Fang, Shijia Gu, Shengjie Fan, Beiying Zhou, Ping Huang, Wei Luo, Lianjun Wang, Wan Jiang
Abstract
Abstract Fine‐grained and dense highly transparent Y 2 O 3 ceramics have been successfully prepared using high sintering activity mesoporous Y 2 O 3 powders without any additive by spark plasma sintering (SPS). The influences of the sintering temperature on microstructure, density, optical, and mechanical properties of SPS‐sintered Y 2 O 3 ceramics were studied in detail. As results, the optimal Y 2 O 3 ceramics with high relative density of 99.90% and fine average grain size of 140 nm were obtained at a low sintering temperature of 1140°C and a moderate load pressure of 60 MPa for 5 min. Meanwhile, the dense Y 2 O 3 ceramics with 1 mm thickness after annealing show a high linear transmittance of 78% (close to 94% of the theoretical value) at 2.4–3 µm wavelength. In additions, the Vickers hardness and fracture toughness of samples can reach 8.48 GPa and 1.45 MPa m 1/2 , respectively. This result proves that the high activity of mesoporous Y 2 O 3 is considered to be an important means for preparing high‐performance fine Y 2 O 3 ceramics at low sintering temperature.