TY - JOUR
T1 - Cold sintering ZnO based varistor ceramics with controlled grain growth to realize superior breakdown electric field
AU - Zhao, Xuetong
AU - Liang, Jie
AU - Sun, Jianjie
AU - Guo, Jing
AU - Dursun, Sinan
AU - Wang, Ke
AU - Randall, Clive A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank the Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51877016 and 51902245 ), the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (No. cstc2019jcyj-xfkxX0008 ), and the Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation, China (No. 171050 ). The authors thank Penn State researchers, K. Tsuji, for his helpful discussions & J. Long, for the instrumentation support in the materials characterization laboratory.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Controlling the grain growth and grain boundary morphology is of great importance in the manipulation of electrical properties of electro-ceramics. However, it has been a challenge to achieve dense varistor ceramics with grain sizes in submicrons and nanometers using conventional thermal sintering at high temperatures. Here we present a strategy to fabricate dense ZnO based ceramics with controlled grain growth and thin grain boundaries using cold sintering process (CSP). With CSP, the sintering temperature of ZnO based ceramics dramatically drops from 1100 °C to 300 °C. The Bi2O3, Mn2O3, and CoO dopants suppress the grain growth of ZnO under CSP conditions, and Bi-rich intergranular films (2−5 nm) can be observed along grain boundaries. The cold sintered ZnO-Bi2O3-Mn2O3-CoO ceramic shows a non-linear coefficient of 33.5, and a superior breakdown electric field of 3550 V/mm. This work thus demonstrates that CSP is a promising technique for designing new submicron-/nano-ceramics with superior performances.
AB - Controlling the grain growth and grain boundary morphology is of great importance in the manipulation of electrical properties of electro-ceramics. However, it has been a challenge to achieve dense varistor ceramics with grain sizes in submicrons and nanometers using conventional thermal sintering at high temperatures. Here we present a strategy to fabricate dense ZnO based ceramics with controlled grain growth and thin grain boundaries using cold sintering process (CSP). With CSP, the sintering temperature of ZnO based ceramics dramatically drops from 1100 °C to 300 °C. The Bi2O3, Mn2O3, and CoO dopants suppress the grain growth of ZnO under CSP conditions, and Bi-rich intergranular films (2−5 nm) can be observed along grain boundaries. The cold sintered ZnO-Bi2O3-Mn2O3-CoO ceramic shows a non-linear coefficient of 33.5, and a superior breakdown electric field of 3550 V/mm. This work thus demonstrates that CSP is a promising technique for designing new submicron-/nano-ceramics with superior performances.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jeurceramsoc.2020.09.023
DO - 10.1016/j.jeurceramsoc.2020.09.023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091216774
VL - 41
SP - 430
EP - 435
JO - Journal of the European Ceramic Society
JF - Journal of the European Ceramic Society
SN - 0955-2219
IS - 1
ER -