Oxide sintering by air pressure controlProfessor Hiromi Nakano of the Toyohashi University of Techno
Oxide sintering by air pressure control
Professor Hiromi Nakano of the Toyohashi University of Technology has collaborated with a company to develop a small, lightweight air-pressure control atmosphere furnace that can rapidly and uniformly synthesize periodical structures of Li2O-Nb2O5-TiO2 (LNT) solid solution materials at 3x ordinary pressure. The underlying mechanism was discovered using detailed composition/structure analysis. As the sintering process is reduced by one-fourth compared to conventional electric furnaces, this technology can also be applied to other materials.
The air-pressure control atmosphere furnace is a sintering furnace that uses a regular 100 V AC power outlet and saves up to 800 W of energy. With this furnace, pressurized gas is supplied/controlled using a compressor or gas flow and materials can be heated up to 1,100 degrees C. (FIG. 1)
