Electric current activated/assisted sintering (ECAS): a review of patents 1906–2008

Abstract

The electric current activated/assisted sintering (ECAS) is an ever growing class of versatile techniques for sintering particulate materials. Despite the tremendous advances over the last two decades in ECASed materials and products there is a lack of comprehensive reviews on ECAS apparatuses and methods. This paper fills the gap by tracing the progress of ECAS technology from 1906 to 2008 and surveys 642 ECAS patents published over more than a century. It is found that the ECAS technology was pioneered by Bloxam (1906 GB Patent No. 9020) who developed the first resistive sintering apparatus. The patents were searched by keywords or by cross-links and were withdrawn from the Japanese Patent Office (342 patents), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (175 patents), the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office of P.R.C. (69 patents) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (12 patents). A subset of 119 (out of 642) ECAS patents on methods and apparatuses was selected and described in detail with respect to their fundamental concepts, physical principles and importance in either present ECAS apparatuses or future ECAS technologies for enhancing efficiency, reliability, repeatability, controllability and productivity. The paper is divided into two parts, the first deals with the basic concepts, features and definitions of basic ECAS and the second analyzes the auxiliary devices/peripherals. The basic ECAS is classified with reference to discharge time (fast and ultrafast ECAS). The fundamental principles and definitions of ECAS are outlined in accordance with the scientific and patent literature.

Rapid consolidation of powdered materials by induction hot pressing

“…1 While it is not clear that sparking or plasma is involved, 2 SPS systems have become widely used for the consolidation of fine grained and nanomaterials because of its speed compared to conventional (pressureless) sintering or even conventional hot pressing. 3 Such rapid pressing is particularly important when consolidating nanomaterials in order to limit grain growth.…”

Forming of micro-components by electrical-field activated sintering

“…Among these technologies, Electric Current Activated/Assisted Sintering (ECAS) has drawn ever growing attention for the sintering of particulate materials [2]. ECAS is a general term for a class of consolidation methods which adopt the combination of external electric field/currents with mechanical pressure for powder sintering, with enhanced interparticle bonding and densification.…”

A methodology to investigate the intrinsic effect of the pulsed electric current during the spark plasma sintering of electrically conductive powders

“…Spark plasma sintering (SPS) is a powder metallurgy process that is typically used for sintering a variety of materials including metals, ceramics, composites and polymers [1,2]. In the SPS method, powders, which can be electrically conducting or insulating, are placed in a container (die, tube, etc) and heated by a pulsed electric current while applying uniaxial pressure.…”