文摘
The current study shows the dramatic effect of an electric field (EF) and use of nanosized cryomilled grains on accelerating sintering kinetics during spark plasma sintering of blended elemental powder compacts of Ti53Al47 targeted to produce γ-TiAl intermetallic compounds. The EF had the dominating effect since it reduced the activation barrier for diffusion through Al3Ti leading to faster growth of Al3Ti; the precursor to γ-TiAl. The Avrami exponent (n) determined for the micrograin compact lies between 1.0 and 1.5, which indicates that reaction sintering is controlled by bulk diffusion in these compacts, while for cryomilled compacts this is between 0.7 and 1.0 suggesting the important role of dislocations and grain boundaries on the transformation during reaction sintering. The activation energies were found to be in increasing order as: cryomilled compacts with EF (182?kJ/mol); micrograin compacts with EF (290?kJ/mol); cryomilled compacts without EF (331?kJ/mol); and micrograin compacts without EF (379?kJ/mol). The cryomilled microstructure also enhanced the sintering kinetics because of the availability of faster diffusing paths in Al and Ti including larger grain boundary area and dislocation density.