Ti–Al–Si alloys are prospective material for high-temperature applications. Due to low density, good mechanical properties, and oxidation resistance, these intermetallic alloys can be used in the aerospace and automobile industries. Ti–Al–Si alloys were prepared by powder metallurgy using reactive sintering, milling, and spark plasma sintering. One of the novel SPS techniques is high-pressure spark plasma sintering (HP SPS), which was tested in this work and applied to a Ti–10Al–20Si intermetallic alloy using a pressure of 6 GPa and temperatures ranging from 1318 K (1045 °C) to 1597 K (1324 °C). The low-porosity consolidated samples consist of Ti5Si3 silicides in an aluminide (TiAl) matrix. The hardness varied between 720 and 892 HV 5.

Ultrahigh pressure SPS processing is demonstrated with high pressure (HP) Belt and high pressure Bridgman apparatus. These HP apparatuses are capable of working in temperature range 20°C-1800°C and the pressure ranges of 800 MPa-6 GPa (HP-SPS-Belt) and 4-6 GPa (HP-SPS-Bridgman) coupled respectively with pulse electric direct current. The designed equipment can be employed for various applications in materials processing to fine tune materials properties through microstructure engineering by employing high pressure and pulse electric current. We have demonstrated the benefits of HP-SPS-Belt and HP-SPS-Bridgman in comparison to conventional SPS to obtain dense sintered compact with β-SiC as a demonstrative material at comparatively low temperatures (1300°C), duration (3 minutes) and pressure (4 GPa). The initial nanosized grains are retained in the sintered compact. The developed innovation has huge potentials for various applications for materials processing, consolidation and assembling in Materials Science.

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