Characterization of Green-Emitting Translucent Zinc Oxide Ceramics Prepared Via Spark Plasma Sintering

Abstract

Translucent, green-emitting zinc oxide (ZnO) bodies, 19 mm in diameter and 0.72 mm in thickness, have been prepared via spark plasma sintering method. The consolidation of ZnO powders was investigated over the temperature range of 550-10501C and the pressure range of 55-530 MPa. Samples sintered at temperatures 48501C and pressures of B120 MPa were translucent and had densities of B100%. Samples sintered at 9501C and 130 MPa showed a higher maximum transmittance than the samples sintered at higher or lower temperatures or pressures, with an excellent in-line transmission of 70% in the IR region around 2330 nm. The dense ZnO ceramics exhibited a strong green emission and a weak ultraviolet emission, and the relative intensity of the green emission increased with increasing sintering temperature.

ZnO – Yb2O3 composite optical ceramics: Synthesis, structure and spectral-luminescent properties

“…It is a challenging task to produce transparent ceramics from non-cubic ZnO crystals, and there are just a few research groups involved in this activity [6][7][8]. ZnO-based ceramics are obtained from ZnO powders using uniaxial hot pressing (HPing) [6,7] or spark plasma sintering [6,8,9]. Uniaxial HPing was successfully applied for fabrication of transparent ZnO ceramics with fascinating scintillating properties [7,10].…”

Comparative evaluation of densification and grain size of ZnO powder compacts during microwave and pressureless spark plasma sintering

“…7 Enhanced diffusion kinetics, reduced energy consumption, rapid heating rates and low sintering time are often cited as primary advantages of microwave 8 and SPS processing 9 influenced by nonthermal or enhanced thermal effects. Significant recent activity with ZnO subjected to SPS has included full densification under extreme load and optical property determination 10 and comparison of hot pressing and SPS maintaining conditions as approximately exact as potentially possible. 11 Pressureless SPS (PL-SPS) is a novel modification of conventional SPS technology first demonstrated by Zang et al and Salamon and Shen for the consolidation of porous and dense ceramic materials.…”