Sintering

Sintering or frittage is the process of compacting and forming a solid mass of material by pressure or heat without melting it to the point of liquefaction. Sintering happens as part of a manufacturing process used with metals, ceramics, plastics, and other materials. The nanoparticles in the sintered material diffuse across the boundaries of the particles, fusing the particles together and creating a solid piece. Since the sintering temperature does not have to reach the melting point of the material, sintering is often chosen as the shaping process for materials with extremely high melting points, such as tungsten and molybdenum. The study of sintering in metallurgical powder-related processes is known as powder metallurgy. An example of sintering can be observed when ice cubes in a glass of water adhere to each other, which is driven by the temperature difference between the water and the ice. Examples of pressure-driven sintering are the compacting of snowfall to a glacier, or the formation of a hard snowball by pressing loose snow together. The material produced by sintering is called sinter. The word sinter comes from the Middle High German sinter, a cognate of English cinder. Sintering is generally considered successful when the process reduces porosity and enhances properties such as strength, electrical conductivity, translucency and thermal conductivity. In some special cases, sintering is carefully applied to enhance the strength of a material while preserving porosity (e.g. in filters or catalysts, where gas absorbency is a priority). During the firing process, atomic diffusion drives powder surface elimination in different stages, starting at the formation of necks between powders to final elimination of small pores at the end of the process. The driving force for densification is the change in free energy from the decrease in surface area and lowering of the surface free energy by the replacement of solid-vapor interfaces. It forms new but lower-energy solid-solid interfaces with a net decrease in total free energy.