Ion beam-induced sintering of near-surface layers

The paper is concerned with sintering of near-surface layers of ceramic materials by ion beam irradiation, a technique that has been developed in our institute in Stuttgart in recent years. When sintering ceramic powders, the problem of degradation of the ceramic materials themselves or the substrates they are deposited on before they start sintering is often encountered. One way of solving these problems is the use of ion beam irradiation. On irradiation, defects are introduced into the material, which initiates sintering, provided the defects are mobile at the temperature of the irradiation. In this way, the sintering temperature can be considerably reduced. The paper outlines the principles of conventional and radiation-induced sintering. Experiments are reported for MeV ion irradiation used to sinter SiC powder material. In a thin surface layer (a few μm), a dense structure is produced in the material at a temperature (low for SiC) of 1450 °C.