Stress-induced anisotropy during sintering of hierarchical porosity ceramics

There is significant interest in the design and processing of porous ceramics due to their use in a variety of applications including energy storage, catalysis, adsorption, separation, and life science applications. For many of these applications, it is desirable to have a hierarchical porous structure in which there is a distinct difference between sizes of pores. Our previous study has shown that microstructure and properties of porous materials become anisotropic after sinter-forging. In particular, the small interparticle pores (intrinsic pores) orient parallel to the applied compressive stress, in contrast to large pores from pore formers (extrinsic), which orient perpendicular to the applied stress. However, the pore size, for transition from extrinsic to intrinsic behavior, (transient pore size) has not been quantified. In this study, we report on the effect of applied stresses during sinter-forging on the morphology (shape and size) of pores of different size. Based on these results, we propose a two-step approach to predict transient pore size for hierarchically porous ceramics. We use this approach to quantify the effect of applied stresses on the transient pore size. Finally, we postulate that the stress dependence of the transient pore size may be related to sintering stress—a fundamental quantity in continuum models of sintering. In addition, it can be used to calculate the effective surface energy of complex sintering systems.