Flash spark plasma sintering of cold-Pressed TiB2-hBN

Further improvements over the unprecedented gains in energy and time efficiency already achieved by the flash spark plasma sintering (FSPS) technique were won by eliminating the pre-sintering stage from the process. Cold-pressed discs (Ø 35mm) of TiB2-hBN were successfully flash sintered from powder to nearly dense material (up to 97%) in less than 110s (∼60s sintering time) in a SPS furnace. The issue of thermal gradients during FSPS was resolved and improvements to the homogeneity of the sample were achieved by modifying the experimental set-up to restrict the current flow through the system. In addition to ease of automation, another advantage of the proposed die-less FSPS configuration is a texturing effect typically achieved by hot forging.