Compaction and sintering behaviour of sol-gel powders

Dry pressing is the most common industrial shaping process for ceramic pieces. Sol-gel powders are of high reactivity, but very often agglomeration-aggregation phenomena limit this advantage by inducing poor compaction behaviour. Consequently the goal of sol-gel powder research - to obtain full densification at very low sintering temperature, is not achieved. With the intention of showing the influence of sol-gel powders, specific characteristics on pressing, compaction diagrams and green body characteristics of two experimental zirconia sol-gel powders have been determined. For comparison a well-known commercial product was used as a control. These observations were correlated as densification tests and initial powder characteristics. The sol-gel powder parameters that must be adapted to dry pressing forming and the incidence of the synthesis conditions, have emerged.