Abstract
A recently developed shock-sintering technique was employed to fabricate dense TiO2 ceramics at low temperatures in short times. The densification and grain-growth behaviors as well as the anatase-to-rutile transformation of a nanocrystalline titania powder without any additives were investigated as a function of sintering temperature. It has been shown that densification proceeds simultaneously with phase transformation. At 1100C for a sintering time of 2 min, a 100% density was achieved, while 98% anatase was transformed into rutile. On the other hand, grain growth was observed to occur mainly after the anatase-to-rutile transformation. This suggests that it is possible to produce nano-structured TiO2 ceramics with high densities.
