A new approach to prepare highly loaded aqueous alumina suspensions with temperature sensitive rheological properties

Poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)-free alumina suspensions with temperature sensitive rheological properties have been successfully produced using the combination of tri-ammonium citrate and magnesium citrate powders with slurry loading up to 60 vol.%. A new approach using the DLVO concept is proposed to design the suspension composition. Both the shear viscosity and the shear modulus of the suspensions start to increase when the suspension temperature is above a critical value. The flocculation of the suspensions is controlled by the dissolution of the magnesium citrate that increases the ionic strength in the suspensions. The dissolution is controlled by the pH of the suspensions, which decreases with increasing temperature. Compared with the same solid loading suspensions containing PAA, the suspension shear viscosity of 25 °C can be reduced, which is useful in developing new near net shape forming technologies.