Sintering Science:  
An Historical Perspective 

By Randall M. German
 

   
Particles are discrete solids with a size less than 1 mm. They flow
and pack under stress, allowing shaping into target geometries.
When the shaped particles are heated, they bond together, and with
sufficient heat, the particles densify into a strong solid. This idea
allows the production of engineering components from iron, silicon
carbide, oxide ceramics, steel, titanium, tungsten carbide, stainless
steel, diamond, and bronze – essentially all common materials.
Fundamentally, sintering is a heat treatment applied to shaped
powders to induce bonding, reduce surface area, and it often
produces shrinkage and densification.
Sintering is an ancient process, initially used for making bricks,
porcelain, pottery, iron, and precious metals. In the last few hundred
years, humans mastered sintering for production of valuable objects
such as lamp filaments, diesel engine particulate filters, and nuclear
power fuel rods. Sintering science emerged in the past century, first
in a qualitative sense, and after the 1940s in a quantitative sense.
Today, sintering is widely employed for the fabrication of
engineered components in a broad array of applications. Indeed,
sintered components are everywhere, from cellular telephones to
replacement hip implants.
This monograph gives an overview of how sintering science evolved,
identifying the key actors and the progress that leveraged from
parallel advances in atomic theory. Profiles are included for several
individuals critical to sintering theory to document who did what,
when critical pieces of the puzzle fell in place, and the tremendous
knowledge building effort that brings us to modern times. This
historical platform provides a basis for projecting into the future, for
example on nanoscale structures and the challenges ahead in
computer simulations of sintering operations.
 Sintering Science: An Historical Perspective 

by

Randall M. German

randgerman@gmail.com


October 2016












copyright © 2016 Randall M. German
dba German Materials Technology, 282 Surfview Court, Del Mar, California 92014, USA
randgerman@gmail.com

All rights reserved. No part of this document is to be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, optical, acoustic, or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, or made
available by any information storage, on‐line posting, broadcasting, or retrieval system, without the written
permission of the author. The information in this document is the private work of the author. It contains key
insights from long‐term study on sintering, sintered materials, sintering processes, and the sintering
industries. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, or similar identifications, are
to provide insight without infringing on legal rights. The information contained in this document is factual
and accurate based on current knowledge, but there is no warranty, expressed or implied. Corrections or
updates go to the above email address.

3
Table of Contents

1. Overview ‐‐‐ 7
2. Introduction ‐‐‐ 13
3. Background ‐‐‐ 19
4. Onset of Sintering Science ‐‐‐ 31
4.1. Historical Milestones ‐‐‐ 31
4.2. Early Products ‐‐‐ 35
4.2.1. Porcelain ‐‐‐ 35
4.2.2. Iron, Copper, Silver ‐‐‐ 38
4.2.3. Platinum ‐‐‐ 39
4.2.4. Iron Ore ‐‐‐ 43
4.2.5. Tungsten ‐‐‐ 44
4.2.6. Cemented Carbide ‐‐‐ 49
4.2.7. Tungsten Heavy Alloy ‐‐‐ 52
4.2.8. Bronze Bearings ‐‐‐ 53
4.2.9. Abrasives ‐‐‐ 55
4.3. Summary ‐‐‐ 56
5. Sintering Developments ‐‐‐ 63
5.1. Underpinnings ‐‐‐ 64
5.2. Highlights ‐‐‐ 65
5.3. Qualitative Concepts ‐‐‐ 71
6. Necessary Infrastructure ‐‐‐ 81
6.1. Atomic Theory ‐‐‐ 81
6.2. Surface Energy ‐‐‐ 84
6.3. Atomic Motion ‐‐‐ 86
6.4. Microstructure ‐‐‐ 91
6.5. Measurement Tools ‐‐‐ 97
6.5.1. Temperature ‐‐‐ 97
6.5.2. Furnaces ‐‐‐ 98
6.5.3. Property Quantification ‐‐‐ 101
6.5.4. Surface Area ‐‐‐ 102
6.5.5. Pressure Generation ‐‐‐ 103
6.5.6. Atmosphere Control ‐‐‐ 103
6.5.7. Newer Tools ‐‐‐ 105
7. Putting Things Together ‐‐‐ 113
7.1. Sintering Simulations ‐‐‐ 113
7.2. Pivotal Leaders ‐‐‐ 118
7.3. Theory of Sintering ‐‐‐ 118
7.4. Linkages ‐‐‐ 120
7.5. Concluding Remarks ‐‐‐ 121
8. Acknowledgments ‐‐‐ 127
9. Author ‐‐‐ 127
10. Alphabetical Listing of Short Biographies ‐‐‐ 129
11. Index ‐‐‐ 135

4

In this monograph, a last name highlighted in red indicates there is a
short biographical sketch included on that individual. These occur by
first mention. The appendix provides an alphabetical listing of names
and page numbers for the biographies.


Cover image – This cross‐section micrograph is from a 400‐grade stainless steel sintered
using boron doping to induce liquid phase formation lighter region during heating at
1415°C for 60 min. Sintering took place in an argon atmosphere that became trapped to
stabilize the pores, giving the round, black spots that are about 10 µm in diameter.

Title image – This cross‐section micrograph is from three gold wires initially twisted
together. Necks formed between the wires during sintering. Grain boundaries formed in
the contact zones and then moved to become curved as they moved due to grain growth.

5
 It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

James Thurber

   

6
1. Overview explanation of why sintering happens
arose in the 1940s. That understanding

was contingent on many fundamental
Sintering is a heating process used to
developments, including concepts related
bond particles into a solid object.
to atoms, crystals, and atomic defects,
Although first sintering dates from at
such as vacancies and dislocations 2 .
least 25,000 years ago, only recently have

we understood why particle bonding
occurs. Consider everyday ceramics. It is
common for student in junior high school
art class to shape wet clay into a bowl or
other “treasure.” After drying, high
temperature firing creates a strong bowl.
That firing step is a form of sintering, Peter V. Hobbs (1936-2005)
involving the high temperature motion of Hobbs had an intense interest in ice and the
many atoms. Different, but in a sense sintering of ice as a basis for determining long-
similar, heating cycles induce sintering of term atmosphere and earth changes.
minerals, polymers, metals, ceramics, and
He was born on 31 May 1936 in London and
composites. Consequently, we estimate did his PhD at Imperial College in London. He
the global sintered materials activity took up a faculty position at the University of
accounts for more than $40 billion in Washington in 1963. He remained in Seattle
discrete engineering products. until his death on 25 July 2005 from cancer. At
the University of Washington, he directed
research in atmospheric physics and put forth
Sintering takes place naturally and is fundamental analysis of ice sintering as related
around us in many situations. For to glacial formation. This started by examining
example, Peter Hobbs 1 revealed how the aggregation of ice crystals in collaboration
sintering accounts for snow particle with Sir John Mason. Trapped gas in the pores
of glacial samples provided atmosphere
bonding during winter to form glaciers signatures from ancient times, contingent on
and icebergs. We see this when the ice understanding when pore closure occurred to
cubes in the home freezer bond during trap the atmosphere. He was extensively
our vacation. Indeed, today we accept that involved in the analysis of airborne particles
most any material can be sintered, even such as smoke and volcanic dust, many
collected by flying small aircraft into dust,
diamond, polymers, and composites. smoke, or other clouds. This included flights
Early practice simply placed ceramic over Mount St. Helens one hour after its
shapes bricks and pots near a fire and eruption in 1981.
this advanced to use of high temperature
He was awarded fellow status in the American
kilns to fire porcelain. Initially, industrial Meteorological Society, and American
sintering focused on bonding metals that Association for the Advancement of Science.
were easily extracted, such as gold, silver, He supervised 35 PhD theses and published
lead, and copper. Major growth came in 350 peer-reviewed papers, 200 conference
the late 1800s with sintering mineral reports, and authored Ice Physics with Mason.
Some of his textbooks passed 30,000 copy
particles, such as the iron oxides used in print runs.
steel production. Now sintering is a step
in the production of many engineering
components. Although the idea of heating For example, dislocation theory formally
particles to gain strength is old, the starts in 1934. Predictive sinter‐bonding

7
concepts arose following advances in rocker arms shown in Figure 1.2 illustrate
understanding phases, crystal structures, the shape complexity possible with
crystal defects, and the solid‐state motion injection molding. The process is similar
of mass by diffusion. Initial to how plastics are formed, relying on a
conceptualization in solid‐state diffusion molten polymer to lubricate particle flow.
arose between 1915 and 1920, and ideas
on Arrhenius temperature dependence In a related option, powder‐binder
arose in 1923. It was not until 1940 that mixtures extruded through a die produce
thermally activated vacancy creation and long‐ thin objects, such as how wet
vacancy motion calculations verified that graphite‐clay mixtures are extruded to
diffusion was not by a ring mechanism form the lead in a pencil. From a high
the supposition was that all atoms in a technology viewpoint, the fabrication of
ring simultaneously shift position to allow hard material twist drills involves
for net atomic migration . coordinated sophisticated rotation during
extrusion. Likewise, the honeycomb
These are a few of the enabling concepts catalytic converter substrates for
required to build sintering theory. automobiles are extruded from a
Likewise, organization and publication magnesia‐alumina‐silicate ceramic.
advances brought researchers together
enabling needed discussions long before Besides these options, a host of related
email and other rapid communication technologies exist to form flat shapes
tools arose. Kempton Roll and Henry tape casting , hollow bodies slip
Hausner and the Metal Powder Industries casting , and one‐of‐a‐kind structures
Federation provided a tremendous forum laser additive forming . The latter gives
where many of the early discussions on complicated shapes in limited production
metals and ceramics are included in the quantities, as is proving useful for
compiled book series Modern airplanes, dental crowns, and implants.
Developments in Powder Metallurgy.

Today, sintering is a crucial step in the
creation of many engineering products,
including most ceramics and cemented
carbides, as well as several metals and
polymers. Many powder‐shaping
processes are used prior to sintering. The
most common is die compaction, where
pressure is applied uniaxially in rigid
tooling to press powder into the desired
shape, such as the gear pictured in Figure
1.1. Die compaction is also used to
produce pharmaceutical and vitamin pills,
as well as candies and pet food. Figure 1.1. A die pressed and sintered
steel automotive gear, showing
On the other hand, injection molding is characteristic shape complexity in the
preferred for forming complex face perpendicular to the pressing
geometries. The automobile engine direction top to bottom .

8
Kempton H. Roll (1924-2015)
Roll was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 23
February 1924. He died in North Carolina on 4
November 2015, having retired from MPIF in
1988. Following Pearl Harbor, he left studies at
Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to join the US Navy
and went to Yale University where he finished a
BS in metallurgical engineering in 1944. He was
trained at Columbia University and American
University as a bomb disposal officer. Of the ten
officers in his class, he was the only one to survive
the war. Roll served on the USS Indianapolis in
charge of a “special weapon” transported to Tinian
Island, but was transferred to the USS Saratoga
only to then learn of the ill-fated sinking of the USS
Indianapolis after delivery of the device used on
Hiroshima.
After the war, Roll did part-time graduate work in
metallurgical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic
Institute with Henry Hausner and George
Kuczynski. He finished the MS degree in 1953. In
1948, he joined the Lead Industries Association in
New York as Technical Director. There he was
responsible for the metal powder segment, which
subsequently became The Metal Powder
Association. At that time North American
production was 1800 tons per year, mostly copper
powders for bearings.
In 1956, a separate organization formed with Roll
as the first employee. By 1959, the organization
became the Metal Powder Industries Federation,
focused on industrial members. Under Roll’s
guidance, MPIF organized annual conferences,
workshops, short courses, management seminars,
and set early standards via collaboration with the
American Society for Testing Materials. A sister
organization, the American Powder Metallurgy
Institute organized for individuals with publication
of the International Journal of Powder Metallurgy
(from 1965) with Roll as publisher and Henry
Hausner as editor. MPIF moved to Princeton, New
Jersey in 1973, and he served as Executive
Director until his retirement in 1988. Every four
years MPIF gives an award named after Roll to a
leader in the field.
Henry H. Hausner (1900-1995)
Hausner was an early leader and organizer in
powder metallurgy. He was born in 1900 in Vienna,
Austria, and died in Salzburg, Austria, on 4 July
1995, having spent the majority of his life in New
York. He arrived in the USA with a doctorate prior
to World War II and became involved in powder
metallurgy of refractory systems – W, Zr, W-Cu,
Mo. Hausner wrote major reports on beryllium,
molybdenum, zirconium, iron, and uranium
processing, and was involved in many projects via
his consulting. Hoeganaes Corporation printed
several of his booklets to help promote the field.
Hausner bragged how he taught Albert Einstein
powder metallurgy. During a visit to the Sylvania
Bayside Laboratories (Long Island, New York),
Einstein became engaged by the subject. Thus,
Hausner provided Einstein with a tutorial on the
process, most likely in German. Kuczynski and
Hausner both worked at the facility on projects
related to refractory metals (tungsten,
molybdenum) and nuclear materials, and both
taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Hausner
was involved with George Ansell and Fritz Lenel at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as they launched
an educational program after World War II.
Hausner was the consummate organizer. After the
success of his student, Kempton Roll, in organizing
the metal powder companies, Hausner became
editor of the journal and conference proceedings
for 25 years - International Journal of Powder
Metallurgy and Modern Developments in Powder
Metallurgy. He co-chaired meetings, edited
handbooks including the Handbook of Powder
Metallurgy, and wrote monographs on emerging
ideas such as powder forging. He taught a popular
extension course on powder metallurgy for New
York University, where he held an adjunct
professor position. He introduced people to the field
and was always encouraging young engineers to
become involved, including this author. He
pioneered many early concepts in the processing of
metal powders. In retirement, Hauser moved to
Salzburg, Austria, to follow his deep interest in
music by Mozart.
9
In each case, sintering occurs after the science took another hundred years,
forming event. A common feature in awaiting a theoretical infrastructure. The
sintering treatments is heating to a peak requisite ideas converged in the 1940s,
hold temperature. The time at this peak but final aspects did not mature until the
temperature ranges from milliseconds to 1980s. These contributions arose to
hours. Although the shaped body is weak explain experimental findings; implying
prior to sintering, after firing it is very theory was well behind sintering practice.
strong, usually competitive in strength Computer simulations emerged prior to
with that attained using alternative the 1980s, with both Monte Carlo ideas
manufacturing routes such as casting, and numerical solutions to partial
machining, grinding, or forging. differential equations. Both were
effectively two‐dimensional. The
Breitkreutz and Amthor 3 simulation
allowed for compaction and sintering to
show energy release over time. The
partial differential solution offered by
Nichols and Mullins 4 was more
calculation intensive and required
considerably more computer time when
compared to the simulated time.

Fred A. Nichols

Figure 1.2. Examples of the shape Nichols did an early computer simulation of
complexity possible by sintering powder sintering neck growth by surface diffusion,
injection molded components. Illustrated publishing his findings in 1965. About 10 s of
sintering time required 10 h of computer time,
here are precise automotive engine back in the punch card mainframe
rockers arms formed from steel with programming days. At the time, Nichols
multiple features and feature worked at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory
orientations. of Westinghouse Electric in Pittsburgh. His
PhD thesis was with William Mullins at
The first examples of sintering date from Carnegie Institute of Technology. The study
was useful in removing some of the geometric
over 25,000 years ago, in the form of fired assumptions used by Kuczynski, Kingery, and
ceramic vessels used to store grain. others, but he reported some cumulative
Archeological reports identify sintered numerical errors that required manual
structures at several parts of the world by intervention to sustain volume conservation.
Initially, his simulated surface profiles showed
about 1000 BC, including Columbia,
undercutting, but this proved a function of the
Egypt, Turkey, and India. Subsequently mathematical solution technique. Variations
more advanced forms of sintering arose followed by King and Mullins, but little notice
in Spain, Germany, England, and Russia, was given beyond the first solution for surface
and today the ideas are practiced globally. diffusion neck growth. Nichols subsequently
moved to Argonne National Laboratory.

Formal use of the term “sintering”
emerged in the 1860s to describe thermal The good news is that such simulations
treatments for agglomerating mineral now exist, based on an accepted body of
particles, such as iron ore. Sintering sintering theory. The bad news is that a

10
wide array of input parameters are observations that emerged long before
required, often requiring extensive effort, modern conceptualizations arose. It
making experimentation still the favored builds from a recent book that hinted at
route to discovery. Eugene Olevsky the history of sintering 6 .
advocates for the current modeling
efforts, especially with attention to the Several individuals were critical to
nonuniform forces and densities advancing sintering concepts; remarkable
associated with spark sintering 5 . stories emerge on these personalities and
egos. To help document the history of
sintering science, nearly a hundred
profiles are included to illustrate the
imprints made by the core individuals. It
was my pleasure to meet many of these
individuals. Indeed part of the pleasure in
Eugene A. Olevsky assembling this document was the
interaction with many experts and
Olevsky was born in the Ukraine, and colleagues.
graduated from the Ukraine National Academy
of Sciences in 1990. He grew up near
Chernobyl and tells of going for a picnic there Section References 
days prior to the disaster.
1 P. V. Hobbs, B. J. Mason, “The Sintering and
He did visiting positions at the Max Planck Adhesion of Ice,” Philosophical Magazine, 1964,
Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, and the Institute vol. 9, pp. 181‐197.
of Mechanics and Materials at the University of
California, San Diego, prior to taking a position 2 R. F. Mehl, A Brief History of the Science of
in the Mechanical Engineering Department at
Metals, American Institute of Mining and
San Diego State University in 1998. He is now
Metallurgical Engineers, New York, NY, 1948.
Distinguished Professor of Mechanical

Engineering.
3 K. Breitkreutz, D. Amthor, “Monte‐Carlo‐
Simulation des Sinterns durch Volumen‐und
His research is on computer modeling of
Oberflachendiffusion,” Metall, 1975, vol. 29, pp.
sintering and related forming processes, with
recent emphasis on spark sintering. Olevsky is 990‐993.
a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, American Ceramic Society, and has 4 F. A. Nichols, W. W. Mullins, “Morphological
several awards from the university. His work on Changes of a Surface of Revolution due to
a continuum model of sintering resulted in a Capillarity‐Induced Surface Diffusion,” Journal of
highly cited review paper: E. A. Olevsky, Applied Physics, 1965, vol. 36, pp. 1826‐1835.
“Theory of Sintering: From Discrete to
Continuum,” Materials Science and 5 A. Maximenko, A. Kuzmov, E. Grigoryev, E.
Engineering, 1998, vol. R23, pp. 41-100. Olevsky, “Direct Multi‐Scale Modeling of
Sintering,” Journal of the American Ceramic
Society, 2012, vol. 95, pp. 1‐6.
This history of sintering science traces the
key early developments, outlines the core 6 R. M. German, Sintering: From Empirical
Observations to Scientific Principles, Elsevier,
sintering models, and projects forward. It Waltham, MA, 2014.
helps understand the eventual success of
computer simulations, as well as the
inherent limitations. Coverage includes
the materials and phenomenological

11
 A modern iron ore sintering facility. Scaling of the sinter plant is possible up to more than
4,000,000 tons per year.

12
2. Introduction  First mention of “sintering” was in 1780
to describe bonded mineral particles

found around geyser vents in Iceland. The
Sintering is a thermal treatment used for
hardened silicate deposits form over time.
bonding particles into a coherent,
The geological hardening associated with
predominantly solid structure, largely
heating relied on the idea of a “zinder” or
through atomic scale mass transport
“cinder” from the German language.
events such as diffusion. The bonding
Subsequently, the phrase described the
leads to improved strength. Particles
briquetting of mineral particles prior to
lower surface energy by forming bonds, in
feeding into melt furnaces, as widely used
turn eliminating surface area, as evident
in iron ore processing. By 1854, the idea
in the microscopic image shown in Figure
extended to include fused coal and iron
2.1. These nominally 32 µm spherical
ore agglomeration, what is also known as
nickel particles were poured into a
induration. In 1864, Percy 5 noted iron
crucible and heated to 1030°C for 30 min.
particle “sintering” is hindered by oxides.
Sinter bonds are evident at the points
About the same time, the patent literature
where particles formed contacts. These
in the USA shows first use of the term
bonds are necks. Neck growth occurred
13“sintering” with respect to thermal
one atom at a time to link the particles
cycles involved in mineral calcination.
into a porous solid. Sintering has

converted the loose powder into a porous
but rigid structure.

Each nickel atom is just 10‐29 m3 in
volume, so these bonds, measuring
nominally 1.6 10‐16 m3 in volume,
represent then the motion of 16 trillion
atoms into the neck. Over the 30 minutes
of sintering, this amounts to 9 billion
successful atomic jumps into the neck
region per second.

Contrary to some definitions in ceramics,
Figure 2.1. Initially loose spherical nickel
not all sintering is associated with
particles are bonded by necks at the
densification. Hausner 1,2 , Mohan et al.
particle contacts after heating.
3 , and Savitskii 4 , discuss some
problems with the definition of sintering First archival literature use of “sintering”
and building a sintering theory that is took place in 1871, also with reference to
relevant to sintering practice. Hausner’s bonding minerals 6 . To avoid the loss of
challenge is still relevant – theory must mineral content due to dusting from
explain the role of temperature, particle turbulence around a blast furnace, it is
size, compaction pressure, and initial critical to sinter the particles into
surface area on the relative mass flow agglomerates. As steel production
between particles. increased, sintering became a recognized
treatment applied to the incoming
minerals.

13

William David Coolidge (1873-1975)
Coolidge was born on 23 October 1873, in
Hudson, Massachusetts. He is famous for
making a practical version of Edison’s 1879 light
bulb. From 1891 to 1896, Coolidge attended the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
electrical engineering, taking a year off for
illness. He attained his PhD at the University of
Leipzig in Germany where he was introduced to
X-rays by Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm
Roentgen. From 1899 to 1905, he was an
assistant to Arthur Noyes at MIT; Noyes did his
PhD with Wilhelm Ostwald [Nobel Prize 1909]
and served as acting president of MIT prior to
moving to California Institute of Technology.
In 1905, Coolidge joined the new General
Electric research center in Schenectady, New
York. Willis Whitney, a peer at MIT and a PhD
student of Ostwald at Leipzig, created this
laboratory. There Coolidge assumed the task of
developing longer life lamp filaments for light
bulbs. By 1907, GE was producing brittle
tungsten filaments using additive metals (Hg,
Cd, Bi) and spark sintering, but he discovered
conditions for forming ductile tungsten via hot
working. This enabled the production of robust,
low-cost, alternating current light bulbs with high
luminous efficiency sold under the Mazda brand
name. He subsequently invented a tungsten
filament X-ray tube and tungsten electrical
contacts. Coolidge with the help of Langmuir
[Nobel Prize 1932] went on to patent several X-
ray tubes. He became head of the GE research
laboratory following Whitney’s retirement in
1932 and Vice President of GE from 1940 to
1944. He finished his career with 83 patents.
Coolidge’s contributions led to the Rumford
Prize by the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences (1914), the Edison Medal by the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers
(1927), the Pioneer of Powder Metallurgy award
by the Metal Powder Industries Federation
(1970), Faraday Medal, Franklin Medal, and he
was named to the National Inventors Hall of
Fame. He died on 3 February 1975, in
Schenectady, New York.
Thus, in the early 1800s, the term
“sintering” described mineral roasting to
agglomerate small particles.
By 1880, the term “sintering” started to
find use beyond mineral processing, such
as in the bonding of precious metal
powders gold, silver, and platinum , and
iron powder.
Ceramics continued to use the term
“induration,” while metals and minerals
changed terminology. For example, in
1913 Coolidge refers to his heating
process to form tungsten lamp filaments
as involving “… filaments are still further
treated to free then from all easily
vaporizable components and to sinter
together the refractory residue into a
coherent conductor” 7 . A decade later,
“sintering” is employed to describe the
production of cemented carbides 8 .
In ceramics, the “induration” term was
favored to describe firing of refractory,
abrasive, or insulator powders. For
example, calcium silicate high
temperature insulation is indurated from
sand, limestone, asbestos, and water 9 .
A shift to “sintering” started in 1939, in
the description of beryllia particle
bonding 10 . Subsequently “sintering” is
used to describe particle bonding in the
fabrication of jewelry, porcelain,
whitewares, and magnets.
Subsequently, dilatometry studies on
copper by Duwez and Martens 11
recorded the combined effects of thermal
expansion and offsetting sintering
shrinkage during heating. The shape of
the dilatometer curves matched the
expectations from thermally activated
diffusion or sintering. This was an
important confirmation of diffusion
events as a basic description for sintering.
14

Pol Duwez (1907-1984)
Duwez was born in Mons, Belgium, on 11
December 1907, and permanently migrated to
the USA at the start of World War II, settling in
Pasadena, California, where he died on 31
December 1984. He was educated at Mons
School of Mines in metallurgy, graduating in
1932, then move to the University of Brussels for
his 1933 doctorate under the guidance of Emile
Henriot, a French chemist noted for electron
microscopy and identification of natural
radioactivity in rubidium and potassium.
During the late 1930s, he was director for
Silicates in the School of Mines in Mons. In 1933,
he became research fellow at the California
Institute of Technology, and returned to
Pasadena in 1940 where he worked at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, and eventually became
Professor at Cal Tech in 1952. In the early
1940s, he collaborated with Theodore von
Karman on plasticity theory and took up studies
on rocket materials, especially high temperature
oxides such as thoria.
Duwez had early interest in sintering. In 1948-
1949, he published first dilatometry curves for
the sintering of stainless steel and copper
powders, showing the combination of thermal
expansion and shrinkage versus temperature
during constant heating and cooling rate
experiments. He became famous for his
discovery of metallic glasses fabricated using
splat quenching to introduce million degrees per
second cooling rates. One of his doctoral
students was William Goddard, noted theoretical
chemist responsible for constructing force fields
used in molecular dynamic simulations. Duwez
retired in 1978.
He published 120 articles and received many
honors, including the Hume-Rothery Award from
the Metallurgical Society, Heyn Medal from the
German Society for Metals Science, and election
to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972
and National Academy of Engineering in 1979.
He was a fellow of the Metallurgical Society,
American Ceramic Society, American Society for
Metals, and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
By 1952, “sintering” was the preferred
term to describe the thermal bonding of
particles in the production of engineering
components 12 . By this time, atomic
diffusion is accepted as a key aspect of
sintering. By 1955, Kingery and Berg 13
treat the sintering shrinkage of ionic,
metallic, and amorphous materials with
similar concepts.
Therefore, from a terminology usage
standpoint, sintering as a description
term started with minerals, spread to iron
ore, then was widely used for metals and
cemented carbides, and finally spread to
describe ceramic firing.
Today, sintering is widely used to
describe the bonding of particles based on
a heating cycle. Heat induces atomic
motion necessary for particle bonding,
resulting in component strengthening.
The degree of sintering increases with
higher temperatures, longer hold times,
smaller particles, or higher applied
pressures.
A conceptualization of sintering is
possible using the sequence of
micrographs assembled in Figure 2.2.
These images correspond to stainless
steel powder bodies quenched from
various temperatures during heating in
hydrogen. The black areas are pores
between the particles. Pores disappear as
the firing temperature increases.
In this figure, the upper left image was
taken after heating to 1000°C, the upper
right represents the structure after
reaching 1100°C. By this point, the pores
are rounding and sinter bonds between
the particles are evident. The lower left
structure corresponds to heating to
1280°C with a significant increase in solid
density.
15

W. David Kingery (1926-2000)
David Kingery was born 10 July 1926 in White
Plains, New York, and died 29 June 2000 in
Wickford, Rhode Island. His education was at MIT
where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1948
and while working as a researcher finished his
doctorate in ceramics two years later in 1950. He
joined the MIT faculty in 1951, became Professor
in 1962, where he remained until 1987, holding
the Kyocera Professorship. An early student was
Robert Coble, who went to General Electric
Research and Development to develop Lucalox, a
sintered translucent alumina used for sodium
vapor lamps. The term Lucalox reportedly was in
reference to “lucky light.” Subsequently Kingery’s
interest turned to the history of ceramics and the
relation of ceramic art to technology.
He made several important contributions to
sintering, including derivation of shrinkage
equations for initial stage sintering and a model
for liquid phase sintering based on Lenel’s ideas:
W. D. Kingery, “Densification during
Sintering in the Presence of a Liquid
Phase 1. Theory,” Journal of Applied
Physics, 1959, vol. 30, pp. 301-306.
He was also involved in developing oxygen
sensors and electronic ceramics. He left MIT in
1987 and he did visiting positions at the
Smithsonian Institution and Johns Hopkins
University before joining the University of Arizona
in 1988 in a position involving materials science
and anthropology. In 1992, he was department
head of a program on culture, science,
technology, and society.
Kingery is recognized for his textbook,
Introduction to Ceramics, as used by many
universities. In 1999, he won the coveted Kyoto
Prize. In addition, he was the first winner of the
David Kingery Award from the American Ceramic
Society. He was a member of the National
Academy of Engineering. Kingery authored 200
publications with a progressive shift from sintering
and ceramics research into concerns over the
history of ceramic materials.
Finally, the lower right image is taken
after quenching from 1365°C, the peak
temperature in this sintering treatment.
Only a few residual pores remain and
they are circular, indicating trapped gas.
Note the microstructure features enlarge
during sintering, most noticeable by a
coarser grain size and fewer grains.
These images convey the facts commonly
associated with sintering –
‐ bonds grow between particles,
‐ surface area declines,
‐ porosity declines as density increases,
‐ pores shrink,
‐ grains enlarge.
The details of the sintering process are
complicated. Fundamentally, the powder
progressively moves toward a lower
energy configuration. This starts with the
elimination of surface area and
subsequently involves the reduction of
grain boundary area. The detailed
interactions and overt description of
sintering derive from energy
minimization ideas 14 . Indeed, the
different metrics, such as density, surface
area, or grain size, usually follow a similar
trajectory for many materials, powders,
and thermal cycles 15 .
Section References 
1 H. H. Hausner, “The Application of the
Sintering Theory in Practice,” Physics of Sintering,
1973, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 429‐440.
2 H. H. Hausner, “Discussion on the Definition of
the Term 'Sintering',” Sintering‐New
Developments, M. M. Ristic ed. , Elsevier, New
York, NY, 1979, pp. 3‐7.
3 A. Mohan, N. C. Soni, V. K. Moorthy, “Definition
of the Term Sintering,” Science of Sintering, 1983,
vol. 15, pp. 139‐140.
16
 4 A. P. Savitskii, “Definition of the Term 10 H. E. White, R. M. Shremp, “Beryllium Oxide:
‘Sintering’,” Science of Sintering: Current I,” Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 1939,
Problems and New Trends, M. M. Ristic ed. , vol. 22, pp. 185‐189.
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Beograd,
Serbia, 2003, pp. 3‐12. 11 P. Duwez, H. Martens, “A Dilatometric Study
of the Sintering of Metal Powder Compacts,”
5 J. Percy, Metallurgy: The Art of Extracting Transactions of the Metallurgical Society of the
Metals from Their Ores, and Adapting Them to American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and
Various Purposes of Manufacture, John Murray, Petroleum Engineers, 1949, vol. 185, pp. 572‐576.
London, UK, 1864.
12 C. G. Goetzel, Treatise on Powder Metallurgy,
6 Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University, Volume III, Interscience, New York, NY, 1952.
Oxford, UK, 2009.
13 W. D. Kingery, M. Berg, “Study of the Initial
7 W. D. Coolidge, Production of Refractory Stages of Sintering Solids by Viscous Flow,
Conductors, U. S. Patent 1,077,674, issued 5 Evaporation‐Condensation, and Self‐Diffusion,”
November 1913. Journal of Applied Physics, 1955, vol. 26, pp. 1205‐
1212.
8 K. Schroeter, Hard Metal Alloy and the Process
of Making Same, U. S. Patent 1,549,615, issued 11 14 R. M. German, “Sintering Simplified: Surface
August 1925. Area, Density, and Grain Size Relations,” Materials
Science Forum, 2016, vol. 835, pp. 50‐75.
9 E. Huettemann, W. Czernin, Method of Making
Light Weight Blocks, U. S. Patent 1,932,971, issued 15 R. M. German, “Sintering Trajectories:
31 October 1933. Description on How Density, Surface Area, and
Grain Size Change,” JOM ‐ Journal of Metals, 2016,
vol. 68, pp. 878‐884.

17


Figure 2.2. Optical cross‐section images pores are black taken by quenching stainless
steel powder compacts from various temperatures during a sintering cycle: 1000°C top
left , 1100°C top right , 1280°C bottom left , and 1365°C bottom right .

18
3. Background   strength, diffusion and creep
factors, vapor pressure, …


The evolution of sintering theory
 processing parameters –
followed far behind the emergence of
component mass, green density,
sintered products. We define sintering
green body homogeneity, heating
theory as a body of geometric, material
and cooling cycles, hold time, peak
kinetic and thermodynamic , and
temperature, applied pressure,
processing relations that ultimately link
process atmosphere, …
to the sintered properties. Most of

sintering theory emerged from the 1940s
into the 1980s. This evolution is evident
in overview reports from several
individuals 1‐8 . Intermediate steps in
developing a diffusion‐based quantitative
theory involved empirical or
phenomenological models 9‐15 ; the era
of empirical data fitting is probably best
reflected by the book on densification
models by Vladislav Ivensen 16 .
Figure 3.1. Sintering theory relies on a
For the current treatment, a qualitative body of input information, assumptions,
outline of sintering theory is given in and relations as categorized here under
Figure 3.1. In this conceptualization, a the headings of geometric, material, and
prediction of what happens in a thermal processing parameters.
cycle requires models that involve three
general categories of information, where
some are dependent parameters and Sintering theory consists of relations that
others are independent parameters – enable calculation of a response to
parameter adjustments as qualitatively
 geometric parameters – particle outlined in Figure 3.2. A specific relation,
size, particle shape, neck size, in this case sintering shrinkage is
grain coordination number, illustrated in Equation 3.1. Such relations
surface area, grain size, density, allow optimization against object
porosity, pore size distribution, functions by examining how adjustable
pore‐grain boundary attachment, variables influence the output. The
shrinkage, … models are incomplete. Part of the
difficulty lies in the nonuniform shaping
 material parameters – atomic size, processes. A key need is for improved
crystal type, melting range, surface predictions of component dimensions.
energy, surface energy variation Currently, it is easier to oversize the
with crystal orientation, grain sintered component and machine or grind
boundary energy, grain boundary to final size after sintering, but a
energy variation with crystal fundamental challenge is to sinter to final
misorientation, elastic modulus, size and avoid machining. In some fields,
temperature dependent yield this will reduce product cost by 40%.

19

Vladislav Aleksandrovich Ivensen (1908-
1995)

Ivensen was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1908,

and he died on 18 December 1995. His
technical studies were at the Moscow Fine
Chemical Engineering Institute with graduation
in 1931 as a specialist in rare earth metals.
From 1932 to 1935, he researched alumino-
thermal reduction as a means to obtain carbon-
free metals. From 1936 to 1938, he was deputy
head of the metallurgical plant at the same Fine
Chemical Engineering Institute where he
became involved in production. Figure 3.2. A simplified view of sintering
theory, where an object function F say
Starting in 1938, his attention turned to hard sintered hardness is examined with
materials at the Moscow Corporation for Hard respect to geometric, material, and
Alloys. This naturally linked with sintering, a key
process variables, usually to maximize the
processing technology for these materials. He
held a parallel position at the State Rare Metals property or to minimize the cost.
Industry Research Institute where he was
involved with upgrading production facilities.
During the early part of World War II, Ivensen Key developments in sintering theory
built the Kirovgrad hard metal plant in the have been traced back from the present
Ukraine and became chief engineer.
conceptualization. For example, the
From 1946 on Ivensen headed the All-Union following equation is a description of
Scientific Research Institute of Hard Alloys. His initial stage isothermal shrinkage for
doctoral thesis was completed in 1947 on monosize spherical particles sintering by
“Kinetics of Metal Powder Consolidation on grain boundary diffusion:
Sintering.” His research involved fracture and
failure in hard materials, plastic flow, gas
reactions during sintering, and forming porous ∆
bodies. The latter focused on a exp

phenomenological model for sintering of porous
structures. His thesis translated from Russian to 3.1
give his book on sintering,
In this equation, L is the sample length
V. A. Ivensen, Densification of Metal after sintering at temperature T for time
Powders During Sintering, Consultants
Bureau, New York, NY, 1973.
t, LO is the initial length prior to sintering,
so ΔL is the length change and ΔL/LO is
His conceptualizations on sintering followed termed the sintering shrinkage taken as
from the ideas of other Russian scientists, such a positive term although the component
as Bal’shin, but led to debate since his work was size shrinks . The parameter g is a
mostly observational in character. Other Russian
scientists, such as Pines, were much more in geometric term equal to 0.3, δ is the
favor of models based on defect migration. As width of the grain boundary and is
author of 100 papers, Ivensen was recognized in typically equal to about 5 atomic
Russia for his work on sintering concepts, but diameters, V is the volume of an atom, γ
most notice for his ideas came after his book
was translated into English.
is the solid‐vapor surface energy, R is the
universal gas constant, G is the grain size,

20
and QB is the activation energy for grain Schade and Ortner 49 ,
boundary diffusion 5,8 . Froes 50 ,
Upadhyaya 51 ,
To identify the sequence of critical and Skorokhod 52,53 .
developments in sintering, it was
necessary to trace backwards to identify
when and how each of the parameters in
sintering theory arose. For example,
although liquid surface energy was a long
accepted concept, solid surface energy
was not considered until the 1940s. Such Cyril Stanley Smith (1903-1992)
backward tracing relied on several critical
assessments as provided by the following Smith was born on 4 October 1903 in
sources: Birmingham, United Kingdom, and went to school
at the University of Birmingham for a BS degree
Ferguson 17 , and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for
Wretblad and Wulff 18 , his doctorate. For a short time, he worked for
Smith 19 , American Brass Company, but then he joined the
Goetzel 20‐22 , Manhattan Project at Los Alamos as a
metallurgist dealing with the production of
Bal’shin 23 , nuclear materials. He died on 25 August 1992, in
Schwartzkopf and Kieffer 24 , Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Jones 25 ,
Mehl 26 , His work won a Presidential Medal for Merit in
Plotkin 27 , 1946. He was also awarded several distinctions,
including the Franklin Institute’s Clamer Medal in
Plotkin and Fridman 28 , 1952.
Johnson and Weeks 29 ,
Exner 30 , Smith founded the Institute for the Study of
Lenel 31 , Metals at the University of Chicago and then
moved to MIT. He published several papers on
Handwerker et al. 32 , the history of materials as well as landmark
Prince and Jones 33 , works on grain size and grain shape in a
Burke 34 , polycrystalline metal:
Kingery 35 ,
Kolaska 36 , W. M. Williams, C. S. Smith, “A Study of
Grain Shape in an Aluminum Alloy and Other
Brookes 37 , Applications of Stereoscopic
Ristic 38 , Microradiography,” Transactions of the
Boyer 39 , Metallurgical Society of the American
Ring 40 , Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and
Petroleum Engineers, 1952, vol. 187, pp.
Haertling 41 , 755-765.
Riley 42 ,
Cahn 43 , With identification of the tetrakaidecahedron
Konstanty 44 , grain shape, Coble would use this in his model
Peret et al. 45 , for his intermediate and final stage sintering.
Noguez 46 , In 1942, Smith published an early history of
Kang 1 , powder metallurgy and his efforts had influence
Johnson 47 , on several MIT pioneers.

Schade 48 ,
German 7 ,
21

Claus G. Goetzel (1913-2001)
Claus Goetzel was born in Berlin, Germany on 14
July 1913. He migrated to the USA in 1936,
where he died in Portola Valley, California, on 7
July 2001. His first degree was from the Technical
University of Berlin. On arrival in the USA, he
studied at Columbia University, where he
completed his doctorate in 1939. Soon after his
activities in hot pressing attracted notice, and by
1942 he was regarded as a pioneer in the field.
Goetzel is recognized for his diligent work on
detailing the developments in sintering and
powder metallurgy via his multiple volume
Treatise on Powder Metallurgy starting in 1949.
He published extensive documentation on the
early years of sintering science.
these tabulations at times disagree.
Accordingly, care was required to
assemble a thorough review. Some of the
difficulties were simply different spellings
of names, but other issues derived from
missing references, wrong publication
dates, and even incorrect citations. One
database would identify a critical
reference, but other tabulations would fail
to include this same reference. These
differences indicate the rush to generate
some of the tabulations lacked critical
vetting by experts.

Goetzel researched hot pressing to detail density

and its variation with different particles and
processing cycles. His studies included use of
cast iron to infiltrate sintered iron, spark sintered Paul Schwarzkopf (1886-1970)
titanium, and research on plastic deformation in
sintering. Schwarzkopf was born in Prague (Czech Republic)
on 13 April 1886, and died in Reutte, Austria, on 27
Goetzel was instrumental in the formation of December 1970. He was a scientist, inventor, and
American Electro Metal Corp., and served as industrialist, credited with establishing a scientific
Technical Director from 1937 to 1948. There he basis for sintered hard materials.
developed armor piercing shells used against
Germany in World War II. He is also credited for His 1910 doctorate was based on studied in
contributions in proximity fuses that allowed Prague, Berlin, and Turin. His interest in high
Japanese kamikaze planes to be shot down melting materials led to involvement in sintering
without direct hits. He was founder of Sintercast tungsten filaments starting in 1913. During World
Corporation of America and obtained 30 patents. War I he served in Tyrol. In 1920, he co-founded a
His career included teaching at New York tungsten wire plant in The Netherlands and started
University, consulting (1960 to 1978) for Metallwerk Plansee in 1921, better known today as
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., and lecturing Plansee. The location was selected to have access
at Stanford University (1961-1988). to hydroelectric power. Unfortunately, the company
was confiscated by the Nazis in 1938 causing him
to flee to the USA and form Schwarzkopf
Especially important were the Development. He regained control of Plansee in
compilations from Claus Goetzel 20‐22 , 1952. The company holds the prestigious Plansee
who was an early advocate for pressure‐ Seminar every four years to bring the research and
assisted sintering 54,55 and a commercial efforts together in Tyrol, Austria.
contemporary to most of the early Schwarzkopf authored five books and was
thinkers on sintering theory 56,57 . recognized for his efforts by the University of
Innsbruck. His books included Powder Metallurgy,
Complementing these published reports Hard Materials and Hard Metals, and Cemented
Carbides.
were a variety of databases, literature
resources, patent searches, and scientific
compilations or indexes. Unfortunately,

22
 article eventually turned out to be in a
British publication, the Journal of the
Chemical Society Transactions.

Hans Eckart Exner (1938-2009)

Exner was born on 2 September 1938 in

Klagenfurth, Austria, and died on 14 October
2009. He attended the Montan University
Leoben with a major in metallurgy. In 1961 he Fritz Victor Lenel (1907-2003)
joined Hellmut Fischmeister at the Institute of
Metals Research in Stockholm, Sweden, while Lenel was born in Germany on 7 July 1907
doing his PhD at Montan University Leoben. (7/7/7). He studied at Breslau and Munich
There he conducted research on structure- Universities and in 1931 obtained his PhD in
property relations in sintered cemented physical chemistry from the University of
carbides. At the sintering conferences, Exner Heidelberg, followed by postdoctoral studies at
was always present, always involved, and the University of Gottingen with Teller and
always filled with new perspectives. Heisenberg. He immigrated to the USA to avoid
the Nazi concentration camps.
From 1965 to 1990 he was a scientist at the
Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, working with Lenel spoke several languages. His first position
Gunther Petzow, and took various visiting in the USA was at Charles Hardy in New York
positions at Stuttgart University, Brown dealing with iron powder metallurgy. In 1937 he
University, University of California Berkeley, and became a powder metallurgist at the Moraine
IBM Research. He joined the Materials Science Division, Delco (Delphi), in Dayton, Ohio. There
Department at Darmstadt University of he worked on applying iron powder metallurgy to
Technology as a professor in 1990 and retired in automotive components, leading to several
2003. patents. In 1947, he joined Matthew Hunter to
work on spark sintering at Rensselaer
His publications were fundamental, dealing with Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. Hunter
particle bonding and rotation as well as pore had developed a process for making sponge
structure evolution during sintering. He relied on titanium powder, so Lenel applied spark sintering
two-dimensional arrays to monitor neck growth to that powder titanium. At RPI he rose in the
pore enlargement. He stuck with a subject long academic ranks and served as Department
enough to generate unique insights, published Chairman from 1962 to 1969. He retired in 1973
his results, and then moved on to other topics. and took on several other positions. He was the
leading academic in powder metallurgy,
His contributions were recognized by several producing 50 graduates that became industry
awards, including an honorary doctorate and and academic leaders. He also consulted with
awards from professional societies in Germany, many of the early adopter firms such as
Great Britain, USA, and Hungary. He was an DuPont’s Remington Arms division.
honorary member of the International
Metallographic Society and Fellow of the Lenel was involved in the evolution of sintering
Institute of Materials. He supervised 100 PhD theory. His group conducted critical experiments
theses during his career. to show dislocation flow in the sintering neck.
Besides developing ferrous powder metallurgy
for automotive applications, he also outlined the
As an example, an early paper by Smith theory of liquid phase sintering, and detailed
58 is wrongly cited as Journal of the spark sintering. In 1984 he was designated a
Pioneer of Powder Metallurgy by the Metal
American Chemical Society by indexes Powder Industries Federation, one of several
and prior authors, apparently citing the awards to his credit. He died in the summer of
paper without obtaining a copy. The 2003 in Troy, New York.

23
Depending on the database, by the middle literature citations versus year through
of 2016, up to a million articles indexed 2015.
under the terms “sintering”, but the
quantity varied between databases. A Both plots exhibit excellent fits to log‐log
consensus spreadsheet eventually regressions, indicating accelerated
emerged as the framework used in activity over time. In technical fields, we
writing this document. recognize first come the basic
publications, then patents, and
Momcilo M. Ristic subsequently commercial products. Thus,
the publication rate is a leading indicator,
Ristic is a member of the Serbian Academy of the patent rate tends to indicate product
Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. He was
born 27 Jul 1929 in Mrcajevci, Serbia. In 1954 he
development, and sales figures show
earned his BS and his PhD was finished in 1962, commercialization, as a lagging indicator.
both at Belgrade University. Unfortunately, as the publication count
increases, there is diminished impact.
He functioned as organizer and promoter for Indeed, the highest cited publication in
international collaboration in sintering. Part of
that is via the journal Science of Sintering and via sintering is from 1996, followed by 1974,
East-West international sintering conferences. and then 2004. Although there is
Approximately ten of these conferences were considerable activity, most of the recent
held in Yugoslavia, but others were held in sintering literature focused on reports for
Canada, USA, Japan, and India. He was
employed in industry and nuclear ceramic fuels
specific systems and improved properties
in Yugoslavia and held a large array of temporary for sintered systems, with tremendous
appointments, such as in Kanpur, India, and New growth in Chinese authors. This is likely a
South Wales, Australia. predictor of future commercial trends.

Ristic founded the “Belgrade School of Sintering”
and mentored 53 PhD and 106 MS theses. This
resulted in nearly a thousand publications and 32
books. He has been recognized by professional
organizations globally, including the American
Ceramic Society and Serbian Chemical Society.
He pulled together the various constituents
involved in sintering research via publications
and conferences. For example, the International
Team for the Science of Sintering has been
under his leadership since its founding in 1962.
Via election of Coble, Kuczynski, Samsonov,
Johnson, Upadhyaya, and other leaders, he
created a forum for sintering research.

Figure 3.3. Cumulative US patent issuance
To gain perspective on the knowledge versus years since the first sintering
developments in sintering, Figure 3.3 patent in 1865 zero years corresponds to
plots the cumulative patent history in the 1865 . By 2015, the total number of
USA using ten years intervals up to 2010. patents on sintering and sintered
The current listing is more than 95,000 materials reached 95,000. In this plot, the
patents in the middle of 2016. In a similar starting point for 0 cumulative years
manner, Figure 3.4 plots the archival corresponds to 1865.

24


Kang, German, Park

Suk-Joong L. Kang

Kang is a distinguished professor in the

department of materials science and
engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology. He started his
affiliation with KAIST in 1980. He also serves as
director for the Center for Nano Interface
Technology.
Figure 3.4. Cumulative distribution of
sintering publications showing significant Kang was awarded his BS degree in metallurgy
increased rates at approximately 1960, from Seoul National University in 1973, MS
1990, and 2005. degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of
Science and technology in 1975, with a Dr-Ing in
materials from Ecole Centrale de Paris in 1980,
and doctorate in physical science from the
A spreadsheet reflecting the history of University of Paris in 1985. He was a visiting
sintering theory and the key steps professor at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart
provided the glue for this analysis. It Germany, University of New South Wales, and
included authors and dates for first University of Tokyo. He is a Fellow of the
reports on various concepts, applications, American Ceramic Society and is a member of
the National Academy of Engineering in Korea.
materials, or processes. High impact He is been noted for several contributions
authors were included to reflect the leading to prizes from professional societies in
pivotal publication dates. For this Korea, Japan, and the USA.
analysis, impact relied on the number of
He has contributed various sintering models
times an article was cited, what is termed related to liquid phase sintering and pore filling,
the h‐factor named after Peter Hirsch . interface motion, and grain growth, including
Many of the literature search engines diffusion induced interface migration in
rank the articles by impact, for example ceramics. His early work on liquid phase
this is true using – sintering showed how small levels or residual
vapor inhibited densification:

https://scholar.google.com S. J. Cho, S. J. L. Kang, D. N. Yoon, “Effect
of Entrapped Inert Gas on Pore Filling
Accordingly, more than 400 critical During Liquid Phase Sintering,”
Metallurgical Transactions, 1986, vol. 17A,
entries created a timeline, spanning from pp. 2175-2182.
24,000 BC to 2016 AD. From this
compilation emerges an image on how Kang has published over 230 articles and has a
sintering theory arose and the pacing book titled Sintering: Densification, Grain
infrastructure issues, as detailed in Growth, and Microstructure, published in 2005.
In addition he holds 12 patents.
subsequent sections.

25

Gopal Shankar Upadhyaya
Upadhyaya lives in Varanasi, India, where he
was born 15 June 1939. His BS degree in
metallurgy was from Banaras Hindu University
in 1960. With MS degree from the University of
Birmingham, in the United Kingdom in 1962. He
attended the Kiev Institute of Technology in the
Ukraine for his doctorate, finishing in 1969
under Samsonov.
Until 1975 he was Associate Professor at the
University of Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee). He
joined the Department of Metallurgical
Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology
Kanpur in 1976 and retired in 2001, having
served as Professor and Department Chairman.
He educated several students in a leading
academic program in India, publishing 300
papers and edited or authored 16 books. He
was recognized for his contributions with awards
of distinction, lifetime achievement awards, and
prizes such as the Niobium Metal from the Max
Planck Institute, Samsonov Prize from the
International Institute of Sintering, Agrawal
Award of the Indian Ceramic Society, the Birla
Medal from the Indian Institute of Metals, and
was provided with the Samsonov Award from
the Ukrainian Materials Research Society.
Many of his studies involved particulate
composites, where metal and ceramic phases
were mixed and sintered to form hard, wear-
resistant materials. Other contributions focused
on ferrous systems and efforts to improve
sintering via additives. His son, Anish
Upadhyaya, followed his example, doing his
PhD with German at Penn State prior to
returning to India where he took up the same
faculty position at IIT Kanpur.
Section References  Metallurgy and Metal Ceramics, 1970, vol. 9, pp.
1 S. J. L. Kang, Sintering Densification, Grain
Growth, and Microstructure, Elsevier 13 V. A. Ivensen, “Phenomenological Analysis of
Butterworth‐Heinemann, Oxford, UK, 2005. the Densification Kinetics of Metal Powders
2 M. N. Rahaman, Ceramic Processing and
Sintering, CRC, Boca Raton, FL, 2003.
3 T. Ring, Fundamentals of Ceramic Powder
Processing and Synthesis, Academic, San Diego,
CA, 1996.
4 R. M. German, Powder Metallurgy and
Particulate Materials Processing, Metal Powder
Industries Federation, Princeton, NJ, 2005.
5 M. F. Ashby, “A First Report on Sintering
Diagrams,” Acta Metallurgica, 1974, vol. 22, pp.
275‐289.
6 R. M. German, “History of Sintering: Empirical
Phase,” Powder Metallurgy, 2013, vol. 56, pp. 117‐
123.
7 R. M. German, Sintering: From Empirical
Observations to Scientific Principles, Elsevier,
Oxford, UK, 2014.
8 R. M. German, Sintering Theory and Practice,
Wiley, New York, NY, 1996.
9 W. G. Schlaffer, C. Z. Morgan, J. N. Wilson,
“Aging of Silica‐Alumina Cracking Catalyst. 1.
Kinetics of Structural Changes by Heat and Steam,”
Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1957, vol. 61, pp.
714‐722.
10 J. H. Rosolowski, C. Greskovich, “Theory of the
Dependence of Densification on Grain Growth
During Intermediate‐Stage Sintering,” Journal of
the American Ceramic Society, 1975, vol. 58, pp.
177‐182.
11 R. M. Spriggs, “Expression for Effect of
Porosity on Elastic Modulus of Polycrystalline
Refractory Materials, Particularly Aluminum
Oxide,” Journal of the American Ceramic Society,
1961, vol. 44, pp. 628‐629.
12 V. A. Ivensen, “Phenomenological Analysis of
the Densification Kinetics of Metal Powders
During Sintering IV. An Approximate Method of
Evaluating the Parameters of an Arbitrary
Beginning of Isothermal Densification,” Powder
552‐556.
During Sintering III. Dependence of the Pore
26
Volume Reduction on Temperature at Constant 25 W. D. Jones, Fundamental Principles of
Isothermal Sintering Time,” Powder Metallurgy Powder Metallurgy, Arnold, London, UK, 1937,
and Metal Ceramics, 1970, vol. 9, pp. 466‐468. updated 1960.

14 Y. Moriyoshi, W. Komatsu, “Kinetics of Initial 26 R. F. Mehl, A Brief History of the Science of
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28


Fritz Lenel, Walter Knopp, and Henry Hausner in Toronto, June 1984, where Knopp
awarded both individuals the Pioneer of Powder Metallurgy Award.

29
 September 1977, at the meeting of the International Team for the Science of Sintering in
Dubrovnik. Just prior to lunch the team assembled for a quick photograph. To the very far
left in the white shirt is George Kuczynski next is Gunter Petzow, Momcilo Ristic, and Rand
German is next in the back row. Hans Exner is in the front row looking at Kuczynski, and
other notable members include Richard Spriggs center back row , Henry Hausner white
shirt, hand on hip . Other individuals include Drs. Kolar, Pastor, Zagar, Thummler, and
Uskokovich. Unfortunately, no key exists, so naming all of the team members is difficult.

30
4. Onset of Sintering 
Science 

Although practiced for thousands of
years, the qualitative description of Frederic Nims Rhines (1907-1986)
sintering did not arise until the early
1900s. Observation tools advanced in part Rhines was born in Toledo, Ohio, on 27 July
1907. He grew up in northern Ohio before
to improve commercial products. In the attending Yale University for his doctorate in
1940s, the main requirements for metallurgy. His first faculty position was at the
sintering theory were enumerated by Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh
Fredrick Rhines 1 for solid‐state (Carnegie-Mellon University). His early focus
sintering and Fritz Lenel 2 for liquid was on alloys and phase diagrams leading to
his 1956 publication of Phase Diagrams in
phase sintering. Recent advances at that Metallurgy.
time in understanding atomic structure
and atomic motion enabled their ideas. Rhines was involved in the early developments
of sintering theory, providing a first qualitative
summary prior to the quantitative models. His
The goal of sintering science is to guide interest in microstructure quantification often
practice. Throughout sintering’s history, focused on sintered structures, as evident in his
new materials, phenomenological 1968 book Quantitative Microscopy. In this
observations, and commercial regard, he collaborated with former student
developments remained far ahead of Robert DeHoff on quantitative analysis of
copper sintering under funding from the Atomic
theory. Even so, much was gained from Energy Commission. That work remains one of
sintering science in two areas: the most complete statistical evaluations on how
density, pore size, surface area, pore
 design – how to fabricate a material separation, and other features varied with time,
temperature, green density, and particle size.
into a component of specific size The original AEC reports are loaded with raw
and shape, largely by specification data, some of which shows up in recent
of the process variables that might publications. The findings led to a sequence of
include particle size or sintering articles on the topological evolution of a powder
during sintering.
temperature
Rhines served on a panel under the National
 properties – how to adjust process Academy of Sciences to evaluate phase
parameters to produce a given diagrams, resulting in collaboration between the
American Society for Metals and National
property combination, such as
Bureau of Standards to evaluate and compile
strength, hardness, or thermal phase diagrams. A major compilation followed
conductivity, while minimizing cost. from this program. He was founding head of the
Department of Metallurgical and Materials
Engineering at the University of Florida. Today
4.1. Historical Milestones  that program is housed in a building named
after him.
Sintering theory followed far behind the
He was elected to Fellow status in three
commercial developments in sintered professional organizations and was well
materials. Several early sintered products regarded for his ability to teach. He was active
grew to become significant industries in research up to two weeks prior to his death
without an explanation on why the on 10 April 1986, in Tampa, Florida.

31
process worked, such as metal cutting who changed his name to de Lodyguine
tools, oil‐less bearings, glass melting on moving to the USA 1847‐1923 .
refractories. Indeed, in the 1990s General
Electric researchers were still
determining why Coolidge’s 1910
tungsten filament process worked 3,4 .
Early commercial applications advanced
by ad hoc experimentation, an empirical
approach that limited improvements. The
story of the incandescent lamp is an
excellent example of empirical advances
made in the absence of scientific
fundamentals.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
In the race to develop the electric light
bulb, parallel efforts took place around Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on 11
the world. In England, Sir Humphry Davy February 1847, and died 84 years later on 18
October 1931, in West Orange, New Jersey.
1778‐1829 invented an electric lamp in
1809. In the USA, a glass bulb with He is a well-known inventor, and his legacy
carbonized filament was invented in 1854 lives today in the form of General Electric. In
by Heinrich Goebel 1818‐1893 . In 1878, the history of sintering, the General Electric
an Englishman, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan Company implemented a long sequence of
developments. Edison accumulated 1093
1828‐1914 , created a carbon fiber USA patents for items such as electric power
filament bulb with a life of 13 hours. generators, microphones, phonographs, light
Canadians Henry Woodward and bulbs, and movies. He was not formally
Matthew Evans patented a useful design educated, in part due to hearing problems
from scarlet fever and ear infections. His early
in 1874. Subsequently, they sold that
employment was as a telegraph operator for
patent to Thomas Alva Edison. The next first the railroad, and later at age 19 for
year Edison patented his evacuated Western Union and Associated Press.
version of this light bulb, also relying on a
carbon filament. It had filament lifetimes His impact on sintering arose from his 1879
light bulb patent. The short life of his early
of 45 hours at first, but eventually incandescent bulb failed to create a demand,
reached longer times. although he reached a life of 1,200 hours
using direct current flowing in a filament
Subsequently, various refractory metals formed from bamboo. After his invention of
the light bulb, early electric power facilities
substituted for the carbon filament, with
were installed using direct current, but
special success in Germany from the Edison’s assistant Nikola Tesla showed
expensive osmium and tantalum superior performance from alternating current.
filaments. Tungsten filaments formed by Tesla subsequently joined with Westinghouse
chemical vapor deposition arose in to become a bitter competitor. Years later, in
1910 William Coolidge was able to form a
Hungary by the early 1900s. An ductile tungsten filament using a sintering
incandescent refractory metal filament process.
lamp variously reported as tungsten or

molybdenum was exhibited at the 1900
Yet it took thirty years from Edison’s
Paris World Exhibition in Paris, attributed
1879 patent until William Coolidge
to Russian inventor Alexander Lodygin
32
developed a long‐lasting ductile tungsten
filament for alternating current lamps.

Coolidge formed the tungsten filament by
sintering an ingot and then hot working
and wire drawing the ingot into the William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828)
desired filament. The first sintering step
in a clay crucible imparted ceramic Wollaston was born 6 August 1766, in East
impurities that pinned the grain Dereham, Norfolkshire, England, and died on
22 December 1828, in London. He was tutored
boundaries. This was crucial to success. privately and admitted at age 15 to Caius
Similar sintering processes arose earlier College in Cambridge, and completed his
for shaping iron and platinum powders. education with a doctorate in medicine in 1793.
Unfortunately, the critical details of His interests included medicine, chemistry,
botany, crystallography, metallurgy, optics, and
Coolidge’s discovery were not understood physics, and he was quite active in the study of
and his patent was subsequently minerals.
disallowed, reportedly since it was similar
to Wollaston’s process of century earlier His medical practice lasted until 1797 and from
for forming platinum. then he was an experimental scientist who took
up platinum sintering. His mineral work resulted
in wollastonite (CaSiO3) being named after him.
Even in 1948, George Kuczynski at He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, serving
Sylvania was tasked with unlocking the as President in 1820. In 1802, he won the
secret of grain boundary pinning. Today, Copley Medal, joining a most distinguished list
of winners. Further, his efforts were recognized
doped tungsten is standard practice in by the Geological Society of London, which
tungsten filament metallurgy 5 . The created the Wollaston Medal in 1831, which is
oxides act to retard grain growth during still given annually.
service. Kuczynski was instrumental in
promoting a diffusion view to explain Wollaston developed a press-sinter-forge
technique to shape platinum. He sold these
sintering, yet his efforts occurred almost products starting in 1805, long ahead of his
four decades after Coolidge’s discovery. In disclosure of his sintering process. He
1949, Kuczynski conjectured the first reportedly made a fortune from his malleable
diffusion model for particle bonding in platinum for use in glass melting. Wollaston is
recognized for discovery of palladium and
sintering, a significant step in building a rhodium. He also discovered and patented
quantitative theory. Camera Lucida in 1807 (a reinvention of a 200
year old idea). It enables artist to render
The history of sintering is pinned by accurate images on drawings and paintings. He
many such observations about how a also invented a zinc plate battery and did
research that was the basis for Michael
powder improves strength because of Faraday’s first motor. Wollaston convinced the
firing. Early use of sintering is evident in House of Commons to adopt the imperial
the form of archeological artifacts, but the gallon, equal to the volume of 10 pounds of
details are lost and only fragments remain water and to reject the metric system. He
to tell the story. After about the year developed the first bimetal thermostat.
1700, documents remained to provide He had 56 publications and was friends with Sir
details on the historical segments. Thus, Humphry Davy, Sir Walter Scott, and the
for this presentation, the timeline for Darwin family. Wollaston attained distinction for
sintering takes on the following broad being a very early proponent of Dalton’s atomic
theory.
categorizations 6,7 :
33

George
Czeslaw Kuczynski (1914-1990)
 archeological remains, generally
before 1700 Born in 1914 in Poland, George Kuczynski
taught high school math and physics up to the
‐ retrieved evidence of early 1939 invasion by Germany. He moved to the
sintering successes, most detail is United Kingdom and obtained a degree from
lost University of Swansea, then immigrated to the
‐ examples include archeological USA and obtained employment at Washington
State University in 1943 on alloying to improve
earthenware and metals objects
corrosion resistance. In 1944, he was admitted to
the doctoral program at the Massachusetts
 documented early applications, Institute of Technology in metallurgy.
between 1700 to 1900
‐ records exist for the key actors He married the department secretary from MIT,
and apparently remarried her twice. His early
with qualitative process details employment consisted of short stays at several
‐ examples are porcelain, iron, sites. He taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute
platinum, and iron ore induration with Henry Hausner, where Kempton Roll was
one of his students.
 qualitative sintering concepts, At the Sylvania Electric Bayside Laboratories he
between 1900 to about 1945 focused on nuclear energy and replicating
‐ many discoveries, observations, Coolidge’s process for sintering tungsten lamp
early conjecture, and publications filaments. Kuczynski heat treated spherical
copper powder in a copper dish and observed
‐ examples are tungsten, cemented necking of the particles. He disagreed with
carbides, and bronze bearings Frenkel’s viscous flow idea saying “Frenkel was
solving physical problems in his head. This is
 quantitative sintering theory, post dangerous. He thought that metals flow like
1945 viscous glass. This was obviously a mistake.”
Instead, Kuczynski developed the concept of
‐ robust applications, complex neck growth by volume and surface diffusion. His
systems, and mathematical models model for volume diffusion used the particle
‐ examples started with neck growth surface as the mass source, which gave no
and expanded to several parameters. shrinkage contrary to observation. Thus, in 1949,
when he presented his work at the AIME meeting
in San Francisco, he came under attack. Most
This part of the history traces the early upsetting was the review by Amos Shaler that
sintered materials and applications in contended his model did not explain mass flow.
roughly a chronological pattern, reaching Kuczynski countered that it was a neck growth
model, not a sintering densification model.
through the 1940s. The first three
segments listed above are included here. The attack on his paper caused him to leave
Subsequently, organization of the Sylvania, leave his wife, and leave the USA,
quantitative concepts requires focus on moving to a mining venture in Colombia.
each of the separate conceptual areas, Eventually he arrived at Notre Dame University
where he remained for 27 years, holding several
such as the emergence of atomic theory. sintering conferences. Kuczynski spoke nine
In these cases, the key building blocks languages and often visited at the Max Planck
that underpin sintering theory are given Institute in Stuttgart.
attention in parallel. Finally, the concepts
He died on 16 May 1990 in South Bend, Indiana.
are brought together, namely with
attention to computer simulations of
sintering.

34
 4.2. Early Products  

Archeological findings provide evidence
of sintered ceramic bodies formed from
clay dating from as early as 24,000 BC.
These were apparently fired in open‐air
pits in what is now the Czech Republic.
Periodic advances followed as outlined in
Figure 4.1 6 .

Early ceramic pots were not very strong
and rarely survived intact; see Figure 4.2. Figure 4.2. Early clay pots used a sintering
The low strength reflected a low firing treatment to add strength, but often
temperature. Further, early pots were function was limited by residual porosity,
porous, so they were not useful for making the pots useless for storing wine,
storing liquids. This improved with firing water, or other liquids.
technology and by approximately 10,000
BC, fired clay vessels were used for water 4.2.1. Porcelain 
storage, largely because techniques
emerged to seal surface pores. These Porcelain requires a high firing
were probably precursors to what is now temperature. Early success occurred in
termed glazing. China using progressive advances in kiln
design to generate higher temperatures
Archeological recoveries in China, Egypt, and greater sintered strength.
and throughout the Middle East Accordingly, the product advanced from
document several examples of fired simple earthenware containers to high
beads, amulets, figurines, pots, and strength and leak‐free structures 9‐12 .
earthenware vessels, dating back to 6,000
BC. Kingery 6 and Ring 8 provide By about 1,600 BC, the firing process
several examples that document the improved sufficiently to produce the first
advance of sintered ceramics. examples of porcelain. Higher firing
temperatures allowed partial dissolution
of quartz into a silicate glass, giving
precipitation on cooling to improve
strength. The strength and quality of the
Chinese porcelain improved with kiln
advances that enabled firing
temperatures up to 1300°C. The success
of the Chinese porcelain was widely

Figure 4.1. An approximate timeline for recognized in Europe. For example, the
early ceramic earthenware firing or distinctive design and coloration of Qing
sintering and its maturation to produce Tsing Dynasty porcelain pottery is
porcelain. evident in Figure 4.3.

35
 process, written by Xingxing Song. In
1637, he produced an industrial
encyclopedia to document all of the art,
craft, and industrial processes of that
time. He included details on the secret for
porcelain, that being the dragon kiln,
whose design enabled higher firing
temperatures. A sketch of the furnace is
reproduced in Figure 4.5.

Figure 4.4. A Hitite bronze casting
fabricated using a sintered ceramic shell.
Figure 4.3. Qing Tsing dynasty porcelain
bowl, reflecting an advanced Chinese
sintering capability.

Sintered casting molds for bronze also
emerged in China prior to 1,000 BC, and
spread along the trade routes; for
example, Figure 4.4 shows a bronze
casting made by the Hitites in what is now
Turkey. Since the casting temperature for
bronze can be 1000°C, the ceramic mold
must be dimensionally stable and strong Figure 4.5. A drawing of the inclined
to that temperature; the casting mold Dragon Kiln used in China to reach higher
fabrication was a guarded secret. firing temperatures as required in the
sintering of high strength porcelain.
By 900 AD, porcelain production was an
important industry in China, Korea, and By 1580 AD, long after Marco Polo’s
Japan. Marco Polo brought porcelain to return, an inferior porcelain sintering
Europe about 1295 AD. Although the practice developed in Florence. Although
history of early porcelain is mostly from not competitive with porcelain from
archeological remains, there is one very China, this partial success led to several
important document detailing the Chinese parallel European efforts.

36
 Yingxing Song (1587-1666) Johann Frederick Boettger (1682 to 1719)

The family name is Song, and in Chinese it Johanna Boettger was born on 4 February 1682,
would be typical to give the name as Song in Schleiz, Germany. His father Johanna Adams
Yingxing. His birth was 1587 in Jiangxi, China Boettger was a goldsmith who died when
and his death was 1666. Johanna was less than two years old. At the age
of 14, Johanna became an apprentice as an
Song’s efforts provided a first chronicle on early apothecary in Berlin, where he also took interest
Chinese sintering processes in iron and in glassmaking and chemistry. In 1701, at the age
porcelain. His encyclopedia of industrial trades of 19, Boettger took up alchemy, the
provided the first record explaining why Chinese transmutation of base metals into gold. He did
porcelain was superior to the copycats from secret demonstrations where he melted silver and
Europe, namely it was the kiln design that added a secret powder. After casting and slow
enable higher temperatures. cooling, the next day the product tested as gold.
Word spread of this secret, leading to his being
In his career, Song served in minor political taken captive, first by the King of Prussia and
roles and retired from public life in 1644 after subsequently by Augustus (Augustus the Strong).
the fall of the Ming dynasty. He then took up the
creation of an encyclopedia of crafts, which Augustus was at war with Sweden and sought
included the process for forming porcelain, as gold to fund his lifestyle and war. Boettger was
well as how products from beer to sugar were captured and sent to Dresden, but by 1705
made. This book was copied and distributed Augustus was frustrated by Boettger’s gold
outside China. Therefore, to his credit we failure, so had him transferred to Albrechtsburg
mention this important contribution. over Meissen, Germany, 15 km west of Dresden.
There Boettger took on the challenge of
translucent porcelain. Working with Ehrenfried
The most famous of the European Walter von Tschirnhaus, he performed systematic
porcelain efforts was in Germany, led by experiments with different clay, feldspar, and
Johann Frederick Boettger. His early other minerals, studying paste formulation, firing
cycle, and glaze, to discover porcelain. Boettger
apothecary training guided systematic developed special setters in a high temperature
experiments using local minerals. In the cycle. As porcelain production increased,
absence of phase diagrams, his success Boettger moved back to Dresden to continue his
came from examining a broad range of unsuccessful pursuit of gold transmutation.
compositions using relatively high
Boettger’s porcelain required optimization of
sintering temperatures attained by many variables. He performed systematic study
special sintering enclosures. During this on the formulation and sintering while held in
effort, he was held captive near Dresden, captivity under harsh circumstances. Although
initially to transmute lead to gold. He porcelain already came from China, Korea, and
Japan, still his systematic optimization formed an
made the mistake of demonstrating a important European option. Boettger died on 13
suspicious swap of gold for silver that led March 1719, in Dresden, never having found the
to his imprisonment. While a prisoner, his means to make gold from lead. He wrote in his
success with porcelain allowed local prison laboratory “God the Creator has made a
potter from a gold maker.” By 1725, his porcelain
production starting in 1708.
was famous throughout Europe, but wealth was
never his.

37
An example of this product is shown in fire, probably charcoal, and while hot the
Figure 4.6. The story of Boettger’s forced sinter agglomerated iron was formed and
labors while held in captivity is told in a hammered to densify the sponge oxide
popular book 13 . From a scientific view, removal left pores into a shape. If
his formulation and process efforts reheated, the iron absorbed carbon to
systematically isolated many variables harden as desirable as a sword or knife.
familiar to anyone working in sintering Variants of this process arose in other
today. parts of the world, including Bulgaria and
India. Because of local variations in
impurities, the archeological origin of
sintered iron is often determined by
chemical analysis of the impurities.

Figure 4.7. A simplified timeline for the
early developments in sintered metals,
Figure 4.6. An example of Dresden or indicating the approximate time, metal,
Meissen hard porcelain from and location.
approximately 1730.
In India, both metal powder fabrication
4.2.2. Iron, Copper, Silver  and sintering were established by about
400 AD, providing sources of iron, gold,
The sintering process for metallic objects and silver. The most notable example of
came about from discoveries around the sintered iron is the 7.2 m tall Delhi Iron
world, as outlined in Figure 4.7. Early Pillar weighing about 6,000 kg 16‐18 .
examples of sintered metals included Figure 4.8 is a photograph of the pillar. It
gold, silver, copper, and bronze and the has a 0.25% phosphorous content with a
first of these date from approximately low carbon level 0.15% , with traces of
3,000 BC 14 . Sintered iron artifacts nickel, copper, silicon, and manganese.
trace back to about 2,800 BC in Egypt This alloy is extremely corrosion
15 . Initially these came from meteors, resistant, even by today’s standards. It
subsequently from smelted iron, which was formed in lumps using clay crucibles
was softer since it lacked nickel. Forged charged with sponge, bamboo charcoal,
iron powder artifacts were discovered in and plant leaves. Then the porous
Tutankhamen’s tomb ‐ one of the few structure was hot hammer forged to final
Egyptian tombs not raided in ancient size and density.
times. The Egyptian fabrication process
relied on heating iron oxide in a reducing

38
 appear other metals such as silver and
gold were formed using similar powder
sintering and forging processes.

4.2.3. Platinum 

Platinum has a melting point of 1769°C,
much higher than the flame temperature
attained by wood, charcoal, and other
common combustibles. The adiabatic
temperature for burning methane in air is
1950°C, but the practical maximum
temperature is 1200°C. Thus, melting and
casting platinum exceeds the temperature
range accessible using common fuels.
Since platinum powder is found in nature,
early scientific apparatus relied on
compaction and sintering to fabricate
platinum objects, especially platinum
crucibles. Indeed the first scientific use of
sintering was in the quest to produce
platinum for glass making and similar
high temperature applications.
Figure 4.8. The iron pillar in Delphi
representing an early product from The Inca sintered gold‐platinum jewelry
sintered iron powder. in Ecuador and Colombia starting as early
as 300 BC 19 . The peak sintering
To fabricate the pillar, iron ore was temperature was in the 1100°C range,
reduced in charcoal fires to form sintered sufficient for melting the gold. Indeed, a
agglomerates. The lumps were reheated liquid phase sintering process with gold‐
and while hot the charcoal was swept silver additives provided a variety of
away and the lumps hammered into platinum objects ‐ needles, spoons, fish
ingots. The ingots where then hot forged hooks, forceps, nose rings, and safety
into the structure. A combination of hot pins. Fabrication was most likely a
forging, as an additive process, and cold process of compacting, sintering, forging
chiseling, as a subtractive process, gave or hammering, and annealing, the latter
the shaped pillar and decorative cap. steps repeated until the desired geometry
was attained. Both yellow and platinum
Subsequent developments combined colors were formed with these
carbon additions to the reduced iron and formulations; either high gold 12%
added quenching and tempering, platinum or high platinum 60 to 85%
producing an exceptional strength. with traces of copper and silver. An
Persian merchants carried the examination of the binary phase diagram
formulation to Damascus where armorers in Figure 4.9 shows the two typical Inca
formed famous sword blades using compositions are on the two sides of the
quenching and tempering. It would

39
solid two‐phase field in the Au‐Pt system. powders were used to form jewelry 20 .
Figure 4.10 is a photograph of one such A rash of platinum sintering efforts
creation. followed across Europe, some relying on
lead, arsenic, or mercury additives 21‐
25 . Efforts in France started about 1750,
and by the early 1800s platinum powder
was precipitated, pressed, heated to white
hot temperatures, and hot pressed to full
density 15,25 . Up to 30 repeated heating
and deformation cycles were used due to
the limited temperature attainable with
charcoal. As an intentional additive,
arsenic formed a deep eutectic to allow
liquid phase sintering. After densification,
Figure 4.9. The gold‐platinum Au‐Pt the arsenic was evaporated. By 1816,
binary phase diagram, showing solid mercury was used in a similar manner.
solution alloys rich in either gold or The avoidance of these toxic additions
platinum, two phase miscibility gap in the eventually became the preferred route to
middle, and the opportunity for liquid sintered platinum. Possibly, it was a
phase sintering especially for the high matter of those individuals using toxic
gold alloys for example 15 at.% Pt and additions did not survive.
less than 1200°C .
Platinum sintering in the early 1800s is
the first significant case where public
records are available to document the
individuals and their contributions. In the
United Kingdom, Knight reported
platinum powder was easily compressed
when heated 25 . This led to the
consolidation process developed by
William Hyde Wollaston 1766‐1828 . In
1805 Wollaston developed his secret
consolidation process for forming
platinum objects. He protected the details
until his death in 1828 26‐29 . Between
1805 and 1828, Wollaston became quite
wealthy selling custom fabricated
platinum crucibles. These efforts are
Figure 4.10. A pre‐Columbian platinum‐
noteworthy because his process scaled to
gold object fabricated by an early form of
large, defect‐free pieces, due to his
liquid phase sintering in South America.
development of pure powders and a

sequence of heating and deformation
After the discovery voyages of
steps. For example, his horizontal
Christopher Columbus, samples of Inca
compaction press is shown in Figure 4.11.
sintered platinum arrived in Spain where
Unfortunately, other details were
similar mixtures of platinum and gold
empirical, largely since means did not
40
exist for measuring particle size, sintering As early as 1820, platinum was adapted
temperature, and other parameters. as a filament material for incandescent
lamps 30 . It is no surprise the idea of
compaction, sintering, and hot working,
initially applied to iron and then
platinum, spread to seed Coolidge’s
efforts on tungsten a century later. Of
course, by then the sintering temperature
limits led to electric spark sintering.

In Russia, platinum studies were started

by Appolos Appolosovic Musin‐Puskin
1760‐1805 who was vice president of

Figure 4.11. Redrawn sketch of the lever the Mining Cadet Corps of St. Petersburg
compaction press developed by 22 . He used amalgams to form the
Wollaston for working platinum powder powder with subsequent distillation to
to full density. remove the mercury. The resulting
powder sponge was heated to white hot
Competitive offerings of the time suffered temperatures to sinter the granules,
impurity effects, most evident as blisters giving a malleable form of platinum. The
in the final sintered product. By 1809, his problem of mercury evaporation was a
efforts were producing 13 kg crucibles in barrier to moving this approach into
his London laboratory, a process widespread production.
subsequently used by Johnson, Matthey
and Company. In 1825, these efforts were restarted
because of the discovery of new platinum
The Wollaston approach involved deposits in the Urals. This became a royal
precipitation of ammonium platinum monopoly and revenue source for the
chloride and thermal treatment of the monarchy, so conversion of platinum into
precipitate to obtain a sponge powder coinage became imperative.
that was milled into discrete particles.
The powder was sieved, washed, and Accordingly, Petr Grigorievic Sobolevskii
compacted. This compact was sintered to 1781‐1841 took up platinum
increase handling strength and reheated consolidation at the Mining Cadet Corps
to a “white heat” after which it was hot at St. Petersburg and succeeded in 1826
forged to shape. Note at that time there to form platinum in essentially the same
was no accurate means to measure high manner as practiced by Wollaston 15,21‐
temperatures or even an accepted 24 . This duplication was not recognized
temperature scale, so temperature at the time, since Wollaston did not
descriptions were subjective. Sintered disclose his process until 1828. Between
powder approaches to platinum were 1828 and 1845, Russian coinage
abruptly displaced in 1859 by the advent production using sintered and forged
of high temperature oxygen‐hydrogen platinum totaled about 14,000 kg.
torches that enabled platinum casting.

41
Petr Grigorievic Sobolevskii (1781-1841)
Sobolevskii was born in St. Petersburg, Russia
on 18 February 1781. He died in the same city
on 24 October 1841. After graduating from the
Saint Petersburg Infantry Military School, he
served as an officer, but left the service at age
23. He then served as a translator in the areas
of commerce and formulation of laws. During
this time he studied technical subjects. In 1811,
he invented a gas illumination lamp used in the
Mint, followed by other inventions in iron
purification and steamship engines.
In 1826 Sobolevskii became professor of
chemistry at the St. Petersburg Mining Cadet
Corps. He became a corresponding member of
the Russian Academy of Sciences while
carrying the title of Colonel in the Mining
Department.
Soon after his arrival at the St. Petersburg
Mining Cadet Corps, Sobolevskii was
successful in producing ductile platinum. Via
collaboration with V. V. Liubarskii he developed
a means to fabricate malleable platinum,
sparked by discovery of new deposits in 1824.
This was 70 years after Musin-Puskin pioneered
platinum chemical processing to form sponge
powder. Efforts in Russia focused on 65 to 80%
platinum products, similar to the early products
from Ecuador and Spain. Sobolevskii relied on
hot deformation to densify the sintered
structure. Then he supervised production of
Russian coinage from platinum for 18 years.
The platinum process from Sobolevskii (about
1827) was the same as Wollaston disclosed to
the Royal Society. Namely, platinum sponge is
packed into an iron mold, compressed, and
sintered, after which there is sufficient ductility
to forge the desired shape.
Initially, dispute arose over the priority of
Sobolevskii and Wollaston, but the dispute is
mute since Wollaston was producing platinum
components prior to Sobolevskii starting work
on the problem. Wollaston delayed disclosing
his approach until his death. Indeed, Plotkin in
commenting on powder metallurgy during the
50 years of Soviet rule states that “… in Czarist
Russia which was a technically backward
country until the time of the Great October
Revolution, the production of materials and
products by powder metals techniques was
practically nonexistent.”
Many important discoveries took place in
the quest to produce platinum. Due to
limited combustion temperatures with
common fuels, only sintering approaches
proved viable. Several of the sintering
variants involved liquid phase sintering.
Sometimes the liquid forming agent was
toxic. The early secret recipes lacked
quantitative character and were
imprecise. For example, “red hotness” is a
subjective temperature specification; high
temperature gas thermometers did not
emerge until 1828. Although not alchemy,
platinum sintering in the early 1800s
showed no appreciation for the
underlying atomic events. This was
evident as late as 1923 when Smith 31
conjectured that platinum sintering was
caused by a melting point depression or a
crystallization event. Consideration of
diffusion events based on atomic jumps
into vacant lattice sites came 20 years
later.
After the successful use of sintering to
produce platinum, several other metals
were produced by related approaches,
including copper, silver, and lead. In 1830
Osann used copper powder and sintering
in a manner similar to Wollaston 15,25 .
By the 1840s, articles from copper, silver,
and lead were in production using a
simplified press‐sinter approach, similar
to modern powder metallurgy.
The resulting processing diversity for
early metals is illustrated in Figure 4.12.
The options fit the array of pure and
simple metals, such as silver, copper, gold,
and platinum, but alloys were not
addressed yet. Up to this time, the
thermal bonding of powder was still not
yet termed sintering. Indeed, the ceramic
literature focused on the hardening due
to firing, and called sintering “induration.”
42
 a waste iron‐rich flue dust was sinter
agglomerated into briquettes.

In 1864, John Percy 1817‐1889 of
England describes iron ore agglomeration
into pellets and reported oxide inclusions
in the ore prevent agglomeration. In 1865
MacFarlane uses the term “sintering” in a
USA patent to describe carbonate
calcination without agglomeration 37 .
In 1871 sintering is used in the phrase “In
reference to Western coals we cannot talk

about the sintering or fusion of carbon” in
Figure 4.12. A schematic of the processing
Transactions of the American Institute of
diversity for sintered structures identified
Mining Engineers. By the early 1900s,
by the 1840s, involving different powder,
large scale sintering systems were in use,
shaping, sintering, and densification
where fine iron bearing particles were
options.
mixed with combustible graphite or

gasoline and fired to form iron cakes 32‐
4.2.4. Iron Ore  38 . Figure 4.13 shows such a sintering
plant, giving evidence the large‐scale
As already mentioned, it was not until application of sintering by 1912.
after 1865 that the term “sintering” was
used in relation to industrial processing.
The exhaustion of easy to handle iron
ores required induration or hardening,
and eventually there was a shift in
terminology. The precursor comes from
the German word “zinder” or “cinder” to
reflect the agglomeration of minerals via
the application of heat. Initially,
induration described the hardening of a
powdery mineral. Curiously, in the
ceramics field, “sintering” was reserved
Figure 4.13. Exterior view of an iron ore
for powder agglomeration into the 1940s
agglomeration facility used to sinter small
but as an industrial term, “sintering” was
particles into large agglomerates for
applied in the metallurgical literature to
transport and loading into a blast furnace.
describe oxide induration 32‐35 .


Reflecting this history, today “sintering” is
Iron ore is fed into melt furnaces as
defined in a manner that includes its
briquettes to avoid dusting; small
origin in iron ore preparation – sintering
particles feed improperly. The
is a thermal process for bonding particles
agglomerates are formed from powder
into a coherent, predominantly solid
using additives in high temperature, often
structure via mass transport events that
rotating, kilns. Sintered pellets are easily
often occur on the atomic scale; the
transported 36 . Thus, what was initially

43
bonding leads to improved strength and oxide, acacia gum, and water gave an
lower system energy 12 . extrudable paste. During electric
discharge heating through the powder,
4.2.5. Tungsten   the carbon and oxygen reacted to form a
reducing atmosphere while the zinc
As mentioned already, the quest for evaporated. High temperatures induced
durable electric lighting was significant to sintering to give the filament.
the history of sintering. A massive
opportunity for electrification relied on Johann Lux (?-1925)
people seeking electric lighting. Prior to
Little exists on Lux and his background,
the electric light, gas fired mantles and but apparently he died in 1925. Lux
candles were the options. Early light developed a first process used to form
bulbs based on a carbon filament lasted sintered incandescent lamp filaments. His
just hours and generated 1.4 lumen per work took place in Vienna and started by
reducing tungsten trioxide to tungsten
watt. In Germany Walther Nernst 1864‐
using hydrogen, producing a fluffy purified
1941 Nobel Prize 1920 created an powder. This tungsten was mixed with zinc
early alternative from mixed magnesium, oxide and binder of acacia gum and water.
calcium, and rare earth oxides, delivering The resulting paste was extruded into a
5 lumen per watt. By the early 1900s, filament then heated by direct electric
current passage. The carbon from the
extended life came from sintered osmium binder and the oxygen from the zinc oxide
and tantalum 15 . The formulations reacted giving carbon monoxide vapor to
mixed osmium oxide with rubber or sugar reduce the tungsten. The residual zinc
for extrusion, with burnout of the binder evaporated. Current flow caused the
tungsten particles to sinter, usually in
and hydrogen reduction of the oxide to
vacuum or argon. This spark sintering
form the filament. process avoided construction of an
expensive furnace. Lux’s technique was
Early tungsten filaments arose in Hungary widely used to directly form lamp filaments.
using chemical vapor deposition and Unfortunately, the recent literature has
mistaken his contribution for that of George
sintered tungsten‐nickel compositions. Bloxam, his patent agent. Bloxam made
Both proved to be too brittle, yet the several important contributions to
merits of tungsten were recognized. chemistry, but the 1906 patent is from Lux
Austrian born Carl von Weisbach 1858‐ with Bloxam providing representation -
“Improved Manufacture of Electric
1929 set the stage for tungsten at Osram
Incandescence Lamp Filaments from
in Germany named after osmium‐ Tungsten or Molybdenum or an Alloy
wolfram . thereof,” No 27,002 filed 27 December
1905 and accepted 13 December 1906. A
By 1903, efforts intensified on finding a Johanna Lux emigrated from Austria to the
USA to settle in California in 1921, but it is
powder route to form the tungsten unclear if this is the same individual.
filament, using extrusion of a paste
followed by sintering to produce large
diameter filaments for high wattage To reach the sintering temperature of
lamps 5,39 . A process used by Johann tungsten required self‐heating from
Lux in Vienna involved several steps, intense electric currents, a process
starting with tungsten oxide reduction by termed spark sintering. The idea was
hydrogen to form tungsten powder. Zinc borrowed from Acheson and Moissan.

44
 Edward Goodrich Acheson (1856-1931)
Acheson was born 9 March 1856, in
Washington, Pennsylvania. He grew up in the
coal mines and left school at age 16 to support
his family when his father died. He is best
known for his discovery of silicon carbide
(carborundum) by an electric arc technique
starting from a mixture of silicates and
sawdust.
Acheson’s initial work was in surveying, but he
sustained a keen interest in electrical devices.
In 1880, Acheson took a position in Edison’s
Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory to work on
lamp filaments and help install electrical
lighting systems in Europe. He left in 1884.
While supervising a plant to manufacture
electric lamps, Acheson developed cubic
zirconia as an artificial diamond and worked on
other mixed minerals to produce novel
compounds, including silicon carbide. On 28
February 1893, the SiC patent was awarded
but it was subsequently reassigned based on
priority arguments. Because of the high
hardness, the initial use for SiC was in
abrasives. The development of sintered silicon
carbide using additives took another century to
mature.
Acheson’s device was a precursor to Moissan’s
electric furnace in France. Moissan was better
recognized because of his formal education
and publications. During his lifetime, Acheson
attained 70 patents relating to abrasives,
refractory materials, graphite compounds, and
silicon carbide. He was named to the National
Inventors Hall of Fame and his home is a
National Historic Landmark. He died on 6 July
1931, in New York City at the age of 75.
Indeed, Voelker patented use of electric and Academy of Sciences in France and
spark sintering in 1899 and 1900 40,41 . recognition by the Franklin Institute, Chemical
The formulations relied on mixed Society of London, and Royal Society of London.
carbides of titanium, uranium, and months after receiving the Nobel Prize.
thorium.
Henri Moissan (1852-1907)
Ferdinand Frederic Henri Moissan won the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1906. He was born 28
September 1852, in Paris and died in Paris 20
February 1907. He completed his first studies in
chemistry in 1874 at College de Meaux. This
education did not enable university admission so
he apprenticed to a watchmaker. During the
Franco-Prussian war, he moved back to Paris
where he was conscripted. He took up pharmacy
and became an apprentice in Paris from 1871 to
1874. His doctorate at Ecole Pratique des Haute
Etudes was in 1880. There Moissan worked as an
assistant and rose in responsibility. In 1880, at the
School of Pharmacy in Paris he first held the
position of instructor and then professor of
toxicology in 1886 and finally in 1900 professor of
inorganic chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences at
the Sorbonne in Paris.
Moissan is known for his work on fluorine
chemistry. He discovered a range of fluorine
compounds. It was in the study of fluorine
chemistry that Moissan worked to form new
compounds using his electric furnace and
discovered NaH, KH, as wells as hydrides of other
metals and exotic compounds such as Li6Si2, and
Si2H6. His efforts generated several refractory
metal compounds with carbon, nitrogen, boron,
and silicon.
By the early 1890s, he turned attention to the
production of boron, diamond, and other materials
using a furnace capable of 2200 A and 80 V
discharge, reaching 3500°C. In subsequent
research on refractory metals by Coolidge,
Moissan’s idea of using electric discharge to
reach high temperatures was the basis for
sintering tungsten. Moissan produced over 300
publications and was honored with several prizes,
such as membership in the Academy of Medicine
He died in Paris of acute appendicitis just two
45
Soon efforts to fabricate tungsten lamp Arthur George Bloxam (1866-1940)
filaments intensified. At first tungsten
paste was extruded and sintered to form Bloxam was born in 1866, and died at age 75 on
7 November 1940, as a result World War II
large diameter filaments for high wattage German bombings of London. He was a
lamps. By 1906, tungsten powder billets practical chemist that worked on a host of
were sintered using direct current industrial problems. One of eight children, his
techniques 42 in the process patented father Charles Loudon Bloxam taught chemistry
by Lux. His electric current spark at the Royal Military Academy.
sintering relied on 1 s pulses of 10 A/mm2 Bloxam studied chemistry at Kings’ College and
in vacuum. Arthur Bloxam acted as his moved to the Royal Agricultural College. In
patent agent in London and is often 1891, he moved to head the chemistry
improperly cited as the inventor. department of the Goldsmiths’ Institute in New
Cross, London, where he helped create an
Although Bloxam was a distinguished evening honors program. He was elected Fellow
chemist, he was only the agent in this of the Chemical Society in 1888. In 1897, he
case. The concept of direct current moved became a patent agent focused on
sintering of tungsten was an important chemical industries. As a patent agent, he
precursor to what eventually became a secured two patents on spark sintering. One was
GB 27,002 for Lux (issued on 13 Dec 1906),
mainstay process. Meanwhile Edison’s dealing with rapid electric current sintering of
patent awaited development of a long‐ tungsten and molybdenum lamp filaments
lasting ductile tungsten filament for use in starting with a mixture of ZnO-C-W-and water.
alternating current. The tungsten or molybdenum was sintered with
direct electric current pulsing. Unfortunately
recent records name Bloxam, the patent agent,
By 1906, electric heating was widely as the inventor, which is an injustice to Lux. A
adopted as a means to sinter refractory few years later Coolidge relied on a variant for
metals using direct current techniques. tungsten powder sintering, only he used
Now termed spark sintering, it is an idea hydrogen versus vacuum. Today, Bloxam is
often credited with sintering using an electric
borrowed from the electric furnace current, but that attribution that should go to
invented by Acheson, used by Moissan to Johann Lux. Bloxam was widely regarded for his
form tungsten carbide, and applied to books on chemistry, laboratory techniques, and
refractory metals by Voelker and Lux. two volumes on applied chemistry for engineers.


To create a workable lamp filament, Willis At this point one of the most significant
Whitney 1868‐1958 , a professor from individuals in the underpinning of
MIT, was hired by Edison to form the new sintering theory is starting to have
General Electric research center in impact. In the author’s opinion, that key
Schenectady, New York. For this problem, individual was Wilhelm Ostwald 1851‐
he recruited William Coolidge from MIT 1932 . His impact was large because of
and Irving Langmuir from Stevens the students he educated and the network
Institute of Technology. This was a most that formed with contemporaries. Almost
successful collaboration. Langmuir won all of the significant advances from
the Nobel Prize in 1932 based on his qualitative to quantitative theory comes
research detailing how gases influence into play based on the students and
evaporation. These ideas complimented disciples from Ostwald, a physical chemist
Coolidge’s discovery of sintered tungsten that is the source of coarsening models,
that retained ductility when hot worked. often termed “Ostwald Ripening”.
Figure 4.14 is a picture of the pioneers.
46
 Irving Langmuir (1881-1957)

Langmuir was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 31

January 1881, and died of a heart attack on 16
August 1957, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
He won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for his work on
surface chemistry based on his atomic structure
conceptualization. He was the first industrial
chemist to win that award. Reportedly he was so
quiet that upper management was off-guard
when his success was announced.

Langmuir studied metallurgical engineering at

Columbia University and attained his PhD in
Physical Chemistry from the University of
Gottingen under Walther Nernst in 1906. Nernst
was a Noble Prize winner who worked on
lighting devices. After his doctoral degree,
Langmuir taught at Stevens Institute of
Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1909,
he was recruited by Willis Whitney to work in the
new General Electric Research Laboratory in
Schenectady, New York. Eventually he rose to
the Associate Director position, retiring in 1950.
In the early years, he collaborated with William
Coolidge on tungsten lamp filaments and is
credited with developing the helical coil design.
This lamp made Nernst’s version obsolete. He
also worked on diffusion pumping, inert gas
effects on incandescent filaments, catalytic
behavior, and surface chemistry. He is credited
with the invention of the gas filled incandescent
lamp and atomic hydrogen welding. During his
research, he was the first to work with ionized
gases and termed them plasmas.
Langmuir was relatively obscure in his early
days. Besides the Nobel Prize, he was awarded
the Franklin Medal, Gibbs Medal, and several
professional honors. Honorary degrees were
presented by several universities, including
Harvard and Oxford. The American Chemical
Society named its journal for surface science
after him. His obituary made the front page of
the New York Times.
Figure 4.14. Langmuir, Whitney, Coolidge
at General Electric Research Laboratories.
In the Coolidge approach, reduced
tungsten powder was compacted into a
small ingot and sintered at about 1000°C
in a hydrogen‐nitrogen atmosphere. Final
densification was achieved by direct
electrical current discharge, what is
termed spark sintering. This was the
same approach as used by Lux. Peak
temperatures were probably near
2200°C. The sintered ingots were hot
swaged and drawn into wires using
diamond dies. This product gave 10
lumens per watt and was successful
operating in alternating current for
hundreds of hours. Langmuir determined
the addition of nitrogen or argon to the
evacuated light bulb retarded tungsten
evaporation, enabling longer life with
higher light intensity from higher
operating temperatures. Further, he
determined how coiling the filament, as
illustrated in Figure 4.15, improved life
and reduced discoloration of the bulb.

47
Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932)
Ostwald was born 2 September 1853, in Riga,
Latvia, and died 4 April 1932, near Leipzig,
Germany. Ostwald attended Dorpat (Tartu)
University in Chemistry, earning his PhD in
1878. His served as an assistant in the Physics
Institute and Chemistry Laboratory. In 1881, he
rotated to Professor of Chemistry at the
Polytechnicum in Riga and in 1887 moved to
Leipzig University as Professor of Physical
Chemistry. He was a visiting professor at
Harvard University in 1904-1905.
In 1902, he patented the chemical process for
producing nitric acid. Other contributions
included the law of mass action in chemical
dynamics. He created a textbook on physical
chemistry and organized publications such as
Zeitschrift fur physikalische Chemie in 1887, and
served as editor to 1922. He won the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1909, and was recognized
by several honorary doctorate degrees.
In 1896, Ostwald described the progressive
coarsening of emulsions. The larger droplets
grow at the expense of the smaller droplets,
leading to a progressive decrease in number of
droplets while the median size increases; “the
rich get richer”. Ostwald Ripening describes
coarsening by diffusion through a separating
phase between particles. It differs from
coalescence and sintering.
At Leipzig Ostwald supervised 44 American
students, one was Willis Whitney who started
General Electric’s industrial research laboratory.
Another was William Noyes who started physical
chemistry at MIT. Other students included
Jacobus Van’t Hoff (1901 Nobel Prize), Sevante
Arrhenius (1903 Nobel Prize), Walther Nernst
(1920 Nobel Prize), and Gustav Tammann
(homologous temperature concepts in sintering).
Ostwald hosted some of the top names in
physical chemistry, including Ludwig Boltzmann.
He initially resisted the atomic model, but that
changed in 1905 when Einstein used atomic
motion to explain Brownian motion and Perrin
provided experimental verification.
Figure 4.15. Tungsten lamp filament in
the twisted helical shape most desirable
for long life.
In 1917, Aladar Pacz of General Electric
determined intentional potassium
additions in the tungsten gave a desirable
interlocking grain structure and in 1922
Colin Smithells of General Electric in the
UK identified a range of alkali oxides as
most effective, since they withstood
reduction by hydrogen during sintering
43 . Thus, the important ductile‐brittle
transition temperature effect, inherent to
Coolidge’s success, was linked to two
critical factors:
 low impurity level that comes from
sintering in a hydrogen reducing
atmosphere at a high temperature
 small grain size that comes from
grain boundary pinning from
potassium‐sodium silicate and
alumina dispersoids.
The latter aspect was inadvertently
introduced by the crucibles used in the
first sintering stage.
High temperature creep resistance is
critical to filament life and this is attained
using dopants, such oxides, silicates,
potassium, or phosphorus. By 1920 the
48
case was made that impurities could best Prior to 1900, carbon steel was the most
retain the small grains. common material used for wire drawing
tools. This was displaced by tool steels
The tungsten lamp filament was a critical high speed steels with higher carbon
development. Today 165,000 light bulbs contents. By 1909, the cast cobalt‐
at 40 W are formed from a kilogram of chromium alloys quickly became the
tungsten powder. Now the incandescent leading forming tool material. As
bulb is far surpassed in performance, if microscopy and analysis techniques
not cost, by other technologies. Figure arose, the hardness in these alloys was
4.16 plots the performance gains in traced to carbides formed within the
roughly 20‐year steps 44 . Fluorescent matrix alloys. Diamond was precious
bulbs provide about twice the output per since only natural diamond was available.
watt and these are surpassed two‐fold by Thus, the previously discovered hard
mercury and sodium vapor lamps, the tungsten carbide with rumored diamond‐
latter delivering 100 lumen per watt. The like hardness became a target for use as a
sodium vapor lamp is another remarkable wire drawing die material. The problem
achievement in sintering. consisted of first synthesis of the tungsten
carbide and second consolidation of the
tungsten carbide into wire drawing dies.

The direct synthesis of tungsten carbide,
WC, took place using an electric furnace
process. French chemist Henri Moissan
generated much interest with the 1897
publication of his book The Electric
Furnace. He described how an electric arc
enabled high temperature synthesis of
new compounds such as WC and W2C. His
sketch of the furnace is shown in Figure
4.17. By 1922, Moissan’s electric furnace
Figure 4.16. The lighting efficiency in
concept of spark sintering was combined
terms of lumens per watt versus year for
with pressure by Duval d’Adrian, and by
incandescent light bulbs.
1955 Lenel was densifying titanium,

zirconium, and a host of metals in what
4.2.6. Cemented Carbides  was the first commercial machine 45 .

Soon after the commercialization of Most likely Moissan discovered a mixture
tungsten incandescent lamps, a host of of WC and W2C phase identification by X‐
related refractory metals were ray diffraction was not known yet and it
manufactured with similar press‐sinter‐ was another two years before Williams
deform routes. Tungsten is one of the synthesized pure WC 46 . Thus, early on
hardest metals, so in drawing lamp the issue of tungsten carbide synthesis
filament wire it quickly wore out the seemed to be solved, leaving then the
diamond wire drawing dies, creating an problem of consolidation or sintering.
opportunity for sintered carbides.

49
 milled with nickel, cobalt, or iron to
enable liquid phase sintering at about
1500°C 50 . This is essentially the same
process used today.

Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann
(1861-1938)

Figure 4.17. A sketch of the electric Tammann is linked to some of the most
important practical developments in sintering. He
furnace as used by Moissan to form a was born on 28 May 1861, in Jamburg (near St.
variety of carbides and other hard Petersburg), Russia. Like Ostwald, he studied at
materials. Dorpat University in Estonia and after his
doctorate moved to various positions at that
university, becoming professor in 1894.
Next arose the issues associated with
In 1903, he moved to Gottingen University as
consolidation of the WC into a die director of the newly formed inorganic chemistry
geometry. The first carbide drawing dies institute. In addition, a few years later he added
were formed by casting WC, but they responsibilities for the physics institute. This
were too brittle. By 1914, other latter position was as successor to Walther
approaches included sintering a mixture Nernst, a Nobel Prize winner. Tammann is
recognized for his contributions in basic
of WC and Mo2C at 2200°C, but this also metallurgy, including phase diagrams and
was brittle. Meanwhile, Irish‐born Karl nucleation. He consulted with Osram when
Schroeter worked in the chemical cemented carbides were formed. He promoted a
department of the German gas lamp firm scientific view of sintering and focused on a
means to detect the onset of sintering. In his
DGA. By 1908, he transferred to the studies, powder was stirred during heating and
electrical department, where lighting was when stirring resistance rose the temperature
under study using sintered osmium was noted as the sintering onset temperature. In
filaments. Several processing options collaboration with Mansuri in 1923 he
were explored, including infiltrating conjectured each material had a specific
sintering onset temperature. We now recognize
porous carbide bodies with iron and the onset of sintering is an interplay of several
casting mixtures of carbides and processing parameters.
transition metals 15,46‐48 .
He was distinguished and well regarded, being
elected into the Berlin Academy of Sciences in
In 1919, the merger of DGA, Siemens 1919 and awarded recognition in several other
lamp, and AEG resulted in a new firm forums. In retrospect, he has been labeled “The
known as Osram, with Franz Skaupy Doyen of German Metallurgy” and was
1882‐1969 as director of research for distinguished by several awards along with Fritz
lamp materials 49 . Under Skaupy’s Haber, Max Planck, and Gustav Huttig.
Tammann was unique for his mixture of interests
guidance research in Berlin involved in physical chemistry, physics, and metallurgy.
Schroeter, Heinrich Baumhauer, and He authored some of the early German
other individuals including consultant textbooks on metallurgy.
Gustav Tammann 1861‐1938 who was
He retired in 1929 and remained active up to this
helping develop powder metallurgy. Pure death in Gottingen on 17 December 1938.The
WC was formed using a slow heating cycle German Gesellschaft fuer Materialkunde
to react tungsten powder with graphite. (Materials Science Society) awards an annual
The resulting WC powder was mixed and Tammann Medal.

50
In 1922, researchers at Osram formed
pure WC powder, mixed it with nickel, Since then the major developments
cobalt, or iron, and successfully sintered include hot isostatic pressing to remove
the mixture into a dense composite. final porosity, chemical and physical
Testing verified the success of WC‐Co in vapor deposition of hard coatings such as
tungsten wire drawing. For the company, diamond, and additions to the cobalt to
the focus was on tungsten lamp filaments, control grain size and cooling
not drawing dies. The drawing die patent precipitation. A wide variety of
was filed in just Germany, United alternatives to WC‐Co are offered, but the
Kingdom, and the United States. In the straight carbide persists as the baseline in
USA the tool patent was under the names the field, which is now valued at $25
of Karl Schroeter and Wilhelm Jenssen billion in annual production. Applications
51 . This idea was valuable to several include metal cutting tips, abrasive spray
firms; Krupp which started Widia to water jet nozzles, mining tools, ball
imply “with diamond properties” and point pen tips, die compaction tools,
General Electric which started Carboloy metal shears, and drawing dies. Drawing
and licensed other firms in the USA. Note dies for use in electrical systems, radial
the initial goal was to make dies for tires, surgical suturing, and welding wires
tungsten filament wire drawing, sensibly is still a major activity.
using powder sintering to form the dies to
draw sintered powder. Table of Cemented Carbides Evolution up
to 1960 44,50,52‐54
A succession of inventions arose around approximate main ingredients
the initial cemented carbide, as outlined year carbides – matrix
in the attached table. Most were driven by 1900 cast tool steels
a desire to lower cost and improve 1909 cobalt‐chromium
properties, leading to 6 to 12% transition alloys
metal Co, Ni, or Fe . The important 1914 cast tungsten carbides
compositions and processing steps were 1922 WC – Ni, Co, Fe
known by the 1940s 44,50,52‐54 . 1929 WC TiC – Co
Schwarkopf relied on solid solutions of 1930 WC TaC – Co
WC and TiC in forming the very successful WC VC – Co
Plansee company 15,54 . Philip McKenna WC NbC – Co
patented the W2Ti2C4 variant 55 ; 1931 TaC – Ni
subsequent study found the compound TiC TaC – Co
was not present, yet the concept became 1938 WC Cr3C2 – Co
the basis for the successful Kennametal TiC VC – Ni, Fe
firm. The whole matrix of carbide 1944 TiC NbC – Ni, Co
combinations were explored prior to 1950 TiC NbC VC
World War II. Mo2C TaC – Ni, Co

1951 WC – Ni
Curiously, the initial cemented carbide
TiC – tool steel
tool patent was limited to three countries.
1956 WC TiC TaC NbC
This allowed Swedish companies to copy
Cr3C2 – Co
the concept without a license, becoming
1959 WC TiC HfC – Co
the basis for SECO and Sandvik.
51
 nonmagnetic options. Besides tungsten,
4.2.7. Tungsten Heavy Alloys  the alloys include matrix phases of nickel,
copper, iron, manganese, or cobalt. In
Mixing tungsten with other metals was addition, hardening additions include
well explored during the race to develop rhenium, molybdenum, tantalum, or other
tungsten lamp filaments. Yet the option refractory metals.
arose again in 1938 when Price and
Smithells of General Electric in the UK Most surprising is the ductility and
sought materials for protection against toughness for a material sintered at a
radiation. They discovered a liquid phase relatively low temperature. When only
sintered composition known as tungsten nickel is used, solid‐state activated
heavy alloys 56 . The initial composition sintering occurs, resulting in a brittle
consisted of mixed tungsten, nickel, and material 57 . On the other hand, with Ni‐
copper powders. Surprisingly, that Cu or Ni‐Fe matrix phases, strengths in
composition sintered to full density at the 900 MPa range are typical with 20%
temperatures low compared to that elongation to fracture at 17.6 g/cm3
typical for tungsten. Full density was density. Specifically these properties
attained with peak temperatures near correspond to 93W‐5Ni‐2Fe.
1400°C, giving a two‐phase composite
microstructure as evident in Figure 4.18. The high strength, ductility, and
This image corresponds to a composition toughness arise because the liquid phase
of 93W‐5Ni‐2Fe. solidifies after sintering to form a tough‐
hard matrix free of intermetallics. Lenel
58 felt these alloys provided an ideal
model for liquid phase sintering. Indeed,
many basic experiments on liquid phase
sintering followed his guidance by use of
these alloys. Important in this regard
were the studies organized at the Max
Planck Institute near Stuttgart, Germany,
under the direction of Gunther Petzow.
An amazing confluence of individuals
passed through MPI under his guidance,

Figure 4.18. Cross‐section micrograph of resulting in several landmark
a liquid phase sintered tungsten heavy publications on liquid phase sintering
alloy consisting of 93W‐5Ni‐2Fe, sintered 59‐65 and involved key staff such as
to full density at 1580°C in 120 min. The Winfried Huppmann 66‐71 and
liquid is solidified between the tungsten Wolfgang Kaysser 72‐77 . These studies
grains which are about 40 µm across. isolated important data on the
densification steps, often relying on
Subsequently, a range of tungsten heavy tungsten‐nickel‐copper alloys.
alloys arose, with differences in
properties. The range of compositions After discovery, the alloying diversified as
allows customization of properties to the research intensified, largely because of
application – for example magnetic or use as kinetic energy armor piercing
projectiles. Common compositions rely on
52
W‐Ni‐Cu or W‐Ni‐Fe, but might include
Mn, Mo, Co, and other transition metals as Winfried Huppmann (1945-2016)
reviewed by Upadhyaya 78 .
Guenter Petzow
Petzow was born on 8 July 1926, in
Nordhausen/Harz, Germany. He was educated
in physical metallurgy at the University of
Stuttgart and received his Dipl-Ing in 1956 and
his PhD in 1959. He worked briefly as a visiting
researcher at the University of Michigan. His
research on powder metallurgy, ceramics, phase
equilibria, and physical metallurgy resulted in
over 600 publications, 10 books, and 27 patents.
Most of his patents were on sintered ceramics,
such as silicon nitride, leading to several awards
of distinction.
Petzow served as professor at both the
University of Stuttgart and University of Berlin
and was an inspiration to many scientists
involved in sintering. As a member of the Max
Planck Society, his laboratory in Busnau was the
“Grand Central Station” for the community. From
the early 1970s to the late 1990s, essentially
everyone of note visited, leading to an
impressive list of collaborators. At its peak, the
laboratory housed 80 to 100 students, visitors,
and staff.
His laboratory did excellent microstructure
analysis, winning several international awards.
Petzow served as President of the German
Society for Materials to help guide policy within
Germany. He edited two journals, served on
advisory boards, and was special counsel to
German companies such as Daimler Benz. His
students went on to much success. Indeed, he
was an excellent organizer who motivated and
helped a large cadre of researchers.
Petzow won several awards, including honorary
doctorates, the Hume-Rothery Prize, Sorby
Award, and awards of distinction from the
President of Germany and Emperor of Japan.
He was a fellow of several professional
organizations.
Huppmann was born in Austria in 1945,
educated at the Technical University of Vienna
and did his PhD at the University of Vienna. He
served as a university professor at the Technical
University of Vienna, then worked at Sherritt
Gordon Mines in Fort Saskatchewan, Canada.
His subsequent career involved basic research
on liquid phase sintering while at the Max Planck
Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, with Gunther
Petzow. That position was subsequently filled by
Wolfgang Kaysser.
He left the Max Planck Institute to become
Director of Research and Development for
Sintermetallwerk Krebsoge near Cologne,
Germany (now GKN Sinter Metals), and later
Leader and Technical Director at Hilti in
Liechtenstein. His studies on sintering concepts,
using simple systems, provided insights into
wetting, spreading, capillarity, and grain
rearrangement and coarsening during liquid
phase sintering. In later years, he focused on
supersolidus sintered tool steels. He co-authored
with K. Dalal the Metallographic Atlas of Powder
Metallurgy in 1986. His work took on a practical
focus by using steel powder forging to fabricate
automotive connecting rods. At Hilti, sintered
diamonds in metal matrices were used as tools
for cutting stone and concrete. Huppmann
served as co-chair of the 1986 Powder
Metallurgy Conference. After retiring, he became
President of Liechtenstein Culture Foundation.
Huppmann was awarded the Distinguishes
Service Award by the European Powder
Metallurgy Association in 2008. He retired in
2005 and died in 2016.
4.2.8. Bronze Bearings 
An important discovery was the sintered
self‐lubricating bearing. These have no
competitive replacement option, so they
remain similar for more than a hundred
years. As the industrial age emerged, the
need for reduced friction in motors and
engines invoked the search for long‐life
bearings. In 1870 Stuart Gwynn patented
the use of what is the precursor to the
self‐lubricating bearing 15,79 .
53

Wolfgang Kaysser
Kaysser was born on 31 August 1950, in Baden-
Wuerttemberg, Germany. He serves as scientific
director of the Helmholz-Zentrum Geesthach and
the associated center for materials and costal
research since 2003. Previously from 1982 to
2003 he served as director of the Institute of
Materials Research at the German Aeronautics
and Space Center in Cologne. In conjunction
with that position, he was a research professor at
the RWTH University in Aachen. His intense
efforts in sintering happened at the Max Planck
Institute of Metals Research near Stuttgart, a
position he held under Gunther Petzow’s
leadership from 1979 to 1992.
While at Max Planck, he taught part-time at the
Berlin University of Technology. After leaving the
Max Planck Institute, he focused on functional
gradient materials, hot isostatic pressing, and
research on single particle response to hot
pressing as a basis for constitutive modeling.
Some of the contributions on liquid phase
sintering are highly cited, such as,
W. J. Huppmann, H. Riegger, W. A. Kaysser,
V. Smolej, S. Pejovnik, “The Elementary
Mechanisms of Liquid Phase Sintering I.
Rearrangement,” Zeitschrift fur Metallkunde,
1979, vol. 70, pp. 707-713.
W. A. Kaysser, S. Takajo, G. Petzow,
“Analysis of Particle Growth by Coalescence
during Liquid Phase Sintering,” Acta
Metallurgica, 1984, vol. 32, pp. 107-113.
Kaysser studied at the University of Stuttgart,
earned his PhD in 1978, and completed his
postdoctoral qualification at Berlin University of
Technology in 1990. He helped organize
programs on sintering for the American Ceramic
Society, was co-chairman of the European
Powder Metallurgy Conference in 1986 and co-
edited with Winfried Huppmann Horizons of
Powder Metallurgy. He served on policy
committees in Germany associated with the
Germany Society for Materials, and in 2013 he
was appointed an honorary member.
In a sequence of bearing discoveries,
Gwynn developed mixtures of zinc,
bronze, copper and tin, and in some cases
included natural rubber and intentional
porosity. His approach relied on stirring
the powder mixture while heating and
then pressing the hot powder in a mold to
form the desired shape.
In 1913, Swedish inventor Victor
Lowendahl patented bearings sintered
from copper coated with tin, mixed with
graphite 80 . A sacrificial pore former of
ammonium nitrate was added to the
green body to control pore size and
porosity. Sintering was in the 300 to
540°C range. Pores form where the tin
particles melt and dissolve into the
copper, as evident in Figure 4.19. The
resulting product is porous. After
sintering those pores were filled with oil,
wax, or other lubricant, to provide a self‐
lubricating bearing. Whenever the
bearing heats due to friction, the lubricant
expands to provide a hydrodynamic film.
Early recognition of the commercial
opportunity was evident in a patent for
internal combustion engine bearings in
1916 81 . That General Electric patent
relied on copper, tin, lead, and graphite,
sintered to form a porous self‐lubricating
bearing. Variants followed, and included
the 1927 patent by Williams and
Boegehold 82 that relied on a five hour
sintering holds at 750°C to induce
strength and pore stabilization. In 1939,
Hall 83 reviewed the field and the
parameters involved in successfully
sintering oil‐less bearings from mixed
powders. This 1939 document is the first
set of observations on what had been a
secretive process, but the treatment is
still qualitative with no description of
why the sintering process works. The
science of sintering was about to emerge.
54
 abrasive using a gum resin bond.
Eventually natural diamond powder was
bonded using sintering, where early
sinter bonds consisted of iron oxides. In
1873, Norton and Hancock Pottery in
Worcester, Massachusetts, created a
grinding wheel from emery using sintered
clay as the bond.

By 1883, Paulin Gay of Paris was forming
composites of hard materials and metal
Figure 4.19. Cross‐section micrograph of powder as the matrix 84 . By the late
mixed copper‐tin heated to 480°C, 1890s, the field of abrasives was turning
allowing tin dissolution into the copper to to new materials. The 1891 discovery of
form bronze while creating large pores artificial silicon carbide by Edward
useful for storage of lubricating oil. Goodrich Acheson 1856‐1931 opened
new abrasives possibilities beyond
The discovery of the sintering conditions diamond. Further, Moissan’s electric
to deliver bearings with controlled furnace led to a broad range of new hard
porosity and controlled pore size, but materials, most notably tungsten
high strength, was an empirical carbides. Patents in the 1920s and 1930s
development. It took many years to showed much emphasis on diamond
determine the fundamental transient containing abrasives usually with resin
liquid phase sintering process. Further, bonds 85 . Subsequently, metal bonded
rationalization of the bearing design to diamond arose in the 1940s. Figure 4.20
the starting powder selection, material is an example microstructure, showing
properties, and processing conditions the diamond adhesion to the metal. In
emerged slowly. Meanwhile, production 1952, Comstock used hot pressing to form
of bearings exploded; today bearings for the first alumina grinding wheels 15 .
applications such as hard disk drives,
electric motors, lawnmowers, and
automotive engines are an enormous
industrial activity. Production rates are
probably near a billion bearings per day.

4.2.9. Abrasives  

Several forms of abrasive rely on
sintering. Like other common materials,
the history of abrasives parallels
industrialization in humankind’s history
starting about 25,000 BC. Initially hard
particles were mixed with pliable Figure 4.20. Micrograph of diamond
substances to give a paste. For example, in abrasive embedded in a ferrous matrix
1825 aluminum oxide was formed into an bond.

55
 Gregory J. Comstock (1894-1967) Hall 87 , soon replicated at other sites.
Manmade diamonds depend on the high
Comstock was a metallurgist who performed pressure concepts discovered by Percy
applied research, teaching, and consulted with
companies such as IBM and Chrysler in powder
Bridgman Nobel Prize in 1931 .
metallurgy. Comstock created the powder Eventually, the high‐pressure, high‐
metallurgy program at Stevens Institute of temperature approach enabled mass
Technology, training several key personnel in production of lower cost diamond
sintered products. Prior to that, Comstock worked abrasives. When mixed with metal
for American Hardware from 1914 to 1921, but
served in the US Army during World War I, moved powders, fast consolidation is possible
to International Silver from 1921-1926, Firth Sterling without decomposition of the diamond,
Steel from 1926 to 1931, and Handy and Harmon usually via hot pressing techniques.
from 1931 to 1938. During World War II he served
on the War Production Board, Office of Production
Research and Development, Board of Economic
Besides diamond “superabrasives”, other
Welfare, and Industrial Intelligence Commission. He hard compounds rely on sintered metal
had patents on cemented carbides with transition bonds, including titanium carbide, silicon
metal additions for use as hot pressing dies. carbide, and cubic boron nitride 88‐91 .
The alternative hard particles are used for
Comstock was educated at Phillips Andover
Academy and Yale University, with an honorary cutting ferrous materials, where diamond
Masters of Engineering from Stevens in 1954. In and tungsten carbide are limited in use,
1964 he was named a Pioneer of Powder leading to diversification in the range of
Metallurgy by the Metal Powder Industries common hard materials.
Federation. He inspired Lambert Mott to use
powder metallurgy to form sintered filters, leading to

Mott Corporation. In addition full-density sintered 4.3. Summary 
steels emerged via collaboration with Wally Reen.

It is evident developments related to
A key development in abrasives took sintered products built one upon another.
place in 1927 when diamond particles Achieving a high sintering temperature
were bonded with metal powder by enabled improved porcelain, platinum,
Gauthier 86 . The key intent was to grind and tungsten. Various options
sintered tungsten carbide dies for circumvented the furnace temperature
drawing tungsten lamp filaments from limitations, including press‐sinter‐forge,
sintered ductile tungsten. Metal bonded spark sintering, and hot pressing.
diamonds emerged, with cobalt as a
favorite bond. Hot pressing, such as used In the quest for lamp filaments,
for alumina, gave short heating cycles. consolidation ideas for iron and platinum
seeded developments in tungsten
Today, diamond abrasives are pressure‐ sintering. Then the need for improved
sintered using hot pressing or spark tungsten wire drawing initiated a search
sintering approaches. Polycrystalline for improved die materials, resulting in
sintered diamonds are widely used in the the discovery of liquid phase sintered
oil well drilling field. Matrix phases for cobalt bonded tungsten carbide. Sintered
the diamond include brass, iron, titanium‐ diamond composites are used to polish
copper, and cobalt. In 1955, the first the hard carbides dies, leading to bonded
artificial diamonds were in production abrasives. Artificial diamonds result from
based on the discovery GE of Bundy and high pressure processing. In turn,

56
artificial diamonds are critically
dependent on cemented carbides to build
high‐pressure anvils. Now polycrystalline
diamond is formed at high temperatures
and pressures in a variant of the spark
sintering technique. In turn, abrasive Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961)
finishing and wire drawing machinery
requires low friction bearings leading to Bridgman was born 21 April 1882, in Cambridge,
the growth of sintered porous bronze Massachusetts. After fighting cancer for some
time, he committed suicide at age 79 on 20
bearings. Sensibly a cascade of August 1961, in Randolph, New Hampshire. His
interdependent developments occurred, death note remarked on how a decent society
each touched by sintering. would not make a man do this (suicide) for
himself and it is widely cited in the advocacy for
assisted suicide.
All of this was in the empirical phase of
sintering. Qualitative ideas emerged on Bridgman was educated at Harvard University
why sintering occurred, but the basic starting in 1900. He finished with a PhD in
science infrastructure needed to predict physics in 1910 and remained at Harvard
or model sintering was missing. The reaching professor status in 1919, and stayed
there up to his retirement.
transition from practical know‐how to
science concepts required ideas from a His research on high pressures started while he
broad array of fields. was a student and became so successful that he
won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1946. During
his studies, he was able to reach pressures
Section References  exceeding 10 GPa, resulting in a host of
discoveries. At the same time, he was able to
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 83 H. E. Hall, “Sintering of Copper and Tin
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61


Micrograph of Ferrotic, an early commercial sintered product that involved a combination
of ceramic the darker phase is TiC and a ferrous alloy the lighter phase is tool steel . The
composite provides high durability in metal cutting, bearings, and situations requiring hot
wear resistance. It is fabricated using one of three options – liquid phase sintering of mixed
powders, hot pressing or hot isostatic pressing of mixed powders, or sintering the TiC
followed by infiltration with liquid tool steel. The latter option is termed sinter‐casting.
Commercial production of Ferrotic happened before any theory was available to identify
the processing, properties, microstructure, or other attributes, let alone predict optimal
processing.

62
5. Sintering Developments  transducers, and eventually electronic
ceramics arose from the same base 6‐9 .


Early sintered products show how
The application of sintered ferrous alloys
developments in different fields cross‐
for automotive structural components
fertilized overall progress. For example,
arose as a spin‐off from electrical brushes.
electrical contacts needed in power
Initially, copper additions to graphite
switching relied on mixed powders to
helped improve conduction and in 1935
form composites of an electrically
Harry Stackpole and others in the St
conductive phase copper or silver and
Marys, Pennsylvania region moved to all
arc erosion resistant phase tungsten,
metal structures, creating a new ferrous
molybdenum, tungsten carbide 1‐3 .
press‐sinter industry 10 . Those early
The learning in this area spread to related
efforts evolved into many automotive
applications, eventually ending up in
engine, shock absorber, and transmission
missile reentry nose tips, space vehicle
applications, as illustrated in Figure 5.2.
ion engines, welding electrodes, and

fusion reactors 4 . In turn, controlled
sintering densification gave high
temperature and high strength filters 5 .
Figure 5.1 is a picture of a ceramic diesel
particulate filter used to capture carbon
soot from truck exhaust.

Figure 5.2. A sampling of gears, timing
components, and load transmission
devices made by sintering steel powders.

Meanwhile, non‐softening thermoplastic
polymers, such as polytetrafluroethylene
Teflon® , emerged that depended on
sintering for their fabrication. Roy
Plunkett discovered this polymer as one
of several advanced non‐thermoplastic
polymers 11 . It is curious because this
Figure 5.1. Sintered ceramic diesel
particulate filters used to sequester famous polymer is best consolidated by
harmful carbon soot after combustion. sintering. Indeed, some of the most
durable polymers are formed by powder
Likewise, graded glass seals, automotive sintering routes, including the widely
structural components, barium titinate recognized implant material ultra‐high
molecular weight polyethylene 12 .

63
 Tool cavities were one of the early
successes, such as illustrated in Figure 31.
The approach is targeting $20 billion is
applications by 2020.

Roy J. Plunkett (1910-1994)

Plunkett was born on 26 June 1910, in New

Carlisle, Ohio. After a BA in Chemistry from
Manchester College, he obtained his PhD from
The Ohio State University in 1936. From there he
was employed until retirement (1975) by E. I. du
Pont de Nemours and Company. He died 12 May
1994 at the age of 83.

During experiments in 1938 on chlorofluorocarbon

refrigerant production, he had an experiment go
wrong and after some difficulties opened his Figure 5.3. Tool cavity for plastic injection
reactor to find a white solid. This was PTFE molding fabricated by sintering tool steel
polytetrafluroethylene or Teflon®. It was used in
the Manhattan Project gaseous diffusion plant powder after computer forming using
(Oak Ridge) for enriching uranium hexafluoride rapid prototyping or additive
and by the late 1940s had moved into commercial manufacturing.
production. One of the early applications was for
coating cooking surfaces to avoid food sticking, a
process first started in France.
Each application for sintering seemed to
reach a broader range of materials, but
Plunkett was awarded several honors, including with a persistent set of questions
election to the Plastic Hall of Fame in 1973 and regarding process fundamentals.
National Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 1985. Teflon® Important sintered products emerged
is a high molecular weight powder that is
consolidated by sintering or hot pressing. without a theoretical understanding of
sintering, as needed to specify, control,
and optimize the products. The required
In more recent times, sintering has been scientific insight was not in place until at
adopted in the rapid prototyping field as a least the 1940s.
means to build three‐dimensional objects
or tooling from computer files without
machining. As the idea expanded, the 5.1. Underpinnings 
name shifted to additive manufacturing to
contrast with machining which is Here we create an image of sintering
subtractive. Carl Deckard as a graduate theory as analogous to a chair. The
student at the University of Texas working or sitting surface relies on
patented a laser‐based polymer sintering several strong and sound supports chair
route in 1994 13 . His desktop legs . Likewise, the platform for sintering
manufacturing DTM concept kicked off theory rests on parallel, but separate
a large diversity of approaches; some fields, which evolved to serve as the legs.
relied on cookie‐cut tape cast powder To support sintering theory important
sheets, laser scribed powder beds, ink jet developments were necessary in the
adhesives to bond layered particles, or following support areas:
electron beam scribed powder beds 14 .

64
 surface energy ‐ assignment of surface
attraction due to surface energy arising 5.2. Highlights 
from disrupted atomic bonding at a
surface arose to explain sintering in the Some of the theoretical developments
1940s, took place as industrial users partnered
with research universities. Three
 atomistic aspects ‐ identification of examples in the USA were as follows:
atoms, crystals, crystal defects General Electric and Massachusetts
vacancies and dislocations , defect Institute of Technology
mobility, diffusion, and viscous flow; DuPont/Remington Arms and Rensselaer
started in the early 1990s and matured Polytechnic Institute
in the 1940s to 1950s, Westinghouse and Carnegie Institute of
Technology.
 microstructure ‐ realization that pores
grow and shrink, necks grow, The corporate partner let the university
coordination number increases, grains worry over theory while keeping a focus
grow, and pores interact with moving on commercial products. In this regard,
grain boundaries; critical maturation the publications show how universities
occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, developed key aspects of sintering theory,
including the following examples:
 measurement ‐ means to measure and David Kingery at MIT, mass transport
quantify properties such as models,
temperature relied on many advances; Fritz Lenel at RPI, pressurized spark
dilatometry, thermal analysis, and sintering and dislocation effects,
standard tests for hardness, Richard Fulrath and Joseph Pask at the
conductivity, and strength; critical University of California Berkeley,
developments started in the 1800s and oxide ceramic sintering,
progressed throughout the century, Robert DeHoff at the University of
Florida, quantitative microscopy,
 processing‐property ‐ understanding Suk‐Joong L. Kang at the Korea Advanced
particle size, green density, pressure, Institute of Science and Technology,
temperature, and processes to gain pore‐boundary interactions,
properties, including transient phases, Michael Ashby at the University of
grain boundary phases, and in situ Cambridge, sintering and hot isostatic
reactions; matured from 1950 to 1990. pressing maps,
Zuhair Munir at the University of
These are related fields. Atomic defect California at Davis, compound
motion concepts emerged after we synthesis and field effect sintering,
accepted atomic theory. The role of Herbert Danninger of the Vienna
surface energy helped understand University of Technology, impurity
sintering stress and mass flow. Indeed, effects during sintering,
new measurement tools were required to
track sintering behavior, while
applications advanced without an
adequate theoretical base.

65
 Richard Merle Fulrath (1924-1977)
Richard Fulrath was a professor of ceramic
engineering at the University of California at
Berkeley. A student of Joseph Pask, Fulrath
played an important role in the Berkeley
research and education activities. As a smoker,
he died of lung cancer complications at the age
of 52, on 16 July 1977.
Fulrath was born on 30 Aug 1924, in Princeton,
Illinois, and he largely grew up in Illinois. After
high school, he served in the military, flying 45
missions as an aerial engineer from bases in
England and France. After World War II, he
entered the University of Illinois in 1946,
finishing five years later with BS and MS
degrees in ceramic engineering.
After working at Oak Ridge Laboratory and the
California Research and Development in
Livermore, Fulrath came to Berkeley in 1954 as
a part-time doctoral candidate and full-time
faculty member. After his doctorate, he rose to
professor at UCB and research scientist at the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. There he
applied hot stage scanning electron microscopy
to sintering problems. One notable publications
was “Direct Observation of Liquid-Phase
Sintering in the System Iron-Copper,” Journal of
Materials Science, 1975, vol. 10, pp. 2146-2155.
He was a skilled researcher, widely known and
respected, and helped create international
collaborations in sintering. More than fifty
graduate and post-doctoral students worked
under his guidance. Fulrath coedited two books
and authored 53 articles. He won the Ross
Coffin Purdy award of the American Ceramic
Society, and served in several positions. His
work on electrical ceramics was well known in
Japan; in 1974 he presented 70 lectures at 30
universities and industrial laboratories in Japan.
He is recognized by the Richard Fulrath award
that fosters annual exchanges of outstanding
Japanese and American ceramic engineers.
Joseph Adam Pask (1913-2003)
Pask was born 14 February 1913 in Chicago to
Adam and Catherine Poskoczem. He decided
to change his name prior to entering college.
His BS in ceramic engineering was from the
University of Illinois in 1934, and the following
year he completed his MS degree at the
University of Washington. The PhD in ceramic
engineering came in 1941 from University of
Illinois, followed by appointments with both
universities, Westinghouse Electric, and
Bureau of Mines. He joined the University of
California Berkeley in 1948 and reached
professor status six years later. At Berkeley, he
teamed with Richard Fulrath (a former student)
and Alan Searcy to offer both graduate and
undergraduate programs. From 1958 to 1961,
he served as chairman of Materials Science
and Engineering, and from 1969 to 1980 he
was associate dean for Graduate Affairs. He
retired from Berkeley in 1980. Pask supervised
39 MS and 31 PhD theses, resulting in 200
publications and 8 books, including the edited
Ceramic Microstructures Series. His sintering
studies applied thermodynamic analysis to
understand trajectories. An example of this
approach is in the influential article “Wetting
under chemical equilibrium and nonequilibrium
conditions,” Journal of Physical Chemistry,
1974, vol. 78, pp. 1178-1183, linking dihedral
angle changes to solvation events during liquid
phase sintering. He had a passion for mullite, a
compound of alumina and silica.
Pask died on 14 June 2003 in Brentwood,
California. In his career, he gained many
awards from professional societies including
Fellow of the American Ceramic Society,
Jepson Medal, and Distinguished Life
Membership form the same, Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Honorary Member in the Ceramic
Society of Japan, and election to the National
Academy of Engineering.
66
 Robert Thomas DeHoff Michael Farries Ashby

DeHoff is professor emeritus in the Materials Ashby was born 29 November 1935, and
Science and Engineering Department at the obtained his degrees in Metallurgy from the
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. His University of Cambridge in 1957, 1959, and
BE degree was from Youngstown State 1961. He took a position at the University of
University in 1955, and he gained both his MS Gottingen in Germany from 1962 to 1965. Then
and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon he moved to Harvard University. He returned to
University in 1958 and 1959. Subsequently, he Cambridge University in 1973. He emphasized
migrated to Florida with his former advisor materials selection and design. For over 20
Frederic Rhines and progressed through the years, he was editor for Acta Metallurgica and
faculty ranks to become professor in 1970. His more recently editor for Progress in Materials
research focused on microstructure and the Science.
quantification of microstructure during sintering
and coarsening. To track the changes, he Ashby promotes the use of maps or diagrams
developed a thermodynamic base for to present materials data. His design concepts
interpretation of two-dimensional are widely used in engineering education and
microstructures as related to the three- captured in software containing data on
dimensional structure. common engineering materials. His books,
tutorials, and presentations help propagate his
DeHoff coauthored Quantitative Microscopy concepts far beyond Cambridge. The materials
with Rhines and wrote a textbook on database is the Cambridge Engineering
Thermodynamics in Materials Science. He is Selector. He developed sintering maps based
well known for his early research in which he on a survey of sintering models. In 1974, Ashby
applied the ideas of quantitative microscopy to showed how key processing variables
porous copper compacts processed using influenced neck growth. Subsequently, the
different particle sizes, sintering temperatures, models shifted to maps of density versus
and hold times. The results provided early temperature, time, green density, particle size,
evidence on the sintering trajectory and other parameters. He embraced hot
independent of many powder characteristics. isostatic pressing by allowing for an external
He termed this the topological study of stress. In 1990, his ideas were propagated by a
sintering and favorably linked mechanical computer program HIP 6.0 that enables
properties to the sintered microstructure. In his computer experiments. The distribution of this
later research, the evolution pathway was program established that sintering theory was
generalized using ideas on a common pathway nearing completion.
or growth path envelop.
Ashby is Fellow of the Royal Society and has
been elected to the US National Academy of
Watanabe, Masuda, and Kawasaki at Engineering. Among his several honors is the
Tohoku University, events and 1997 selection to Commander of the Order of
microstructure evolution during the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

ferrous sintering,
Winfried Huppmann and Wolfgang Gary Messing at Penn State, ceramic
Kaysser at the Max Planck Institute, microstructure templating,
liquid phase sintering concepts, Hideshi Miura of Kyushu University
developed heterogeneous sintered

67
 microstructures with exceptional
properties, The innovations continue with cross‐
Seong Jin Park at Pohang University of collaborations over many industries,
Science and Technology, sintering materials, and applications. Thus, this
theory expressed in software brief listing only suggests some of the
packages. highlights.

Zuhair A. Munir Herbert Danninger

Munir grew up in Bagdad, Iraq, and came to the
USA to attend the University of California at
Berkeley, initially in chemical engineering, but
later materials science. His BS, MS, and PhD
degrees were in 1956, 1958, and 1963. Alan
Searcy was his doctoral advisor.
From Berkeley he moved to San Jose State
University where he taught in the materials
science and engineering program, with a brief
stay at Florida State University. In 1972, he
moved to the University of California at Davis.
During his career at Davis, he served as
associated dean, and dean of engineering.
His early sintering research involved
compounds, and over his career the behavior of
compounds were a focus using combustion
synthesis and field assisted sintering. He was
instrumental in initiating academic research in
these areas by editing a journal focused on
advanced materials processing. His global
collaborations brought many visiting faculty to
Davis after he started work on spark sintering for
consolidation of high performance compounds,
such as WC, AlN, and ZrO2.
Munir published over 400 papers and was
inventor on 12 patents, resulting in several
awards for his pioneering efforts, including the
UCD Senate Distinguished Research Lecture,
Humboldt Research Award, and Kingery Award
from the American Ceramic Society. He was
awarded Fellow status by several professional
societies. He was widely known for his concern
over students and ability to sustain outstanding
research as his interests shifted. He was the
author’s doctoral advisor.
Danninger is professor of Chemical Technology
of Inorganic Material at the Technical University
of Vienna. He was born in Linz, Austria on 25
October 1955. His professional preparation was
at the Technical University of Vienna, with
completion of this thesis in 1980. He then
progressed through a series of academic
appointments while sustaining his involvement in
sintered materials based on the reactions during
sintering cycles.
Danninger was co-chair of the 2004 World
Congress on Powder Metallurgy. In 2016, he
was awarded an honorary doctorate from
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and previously
was recognized by the Universitat Cluj-Napoca in
Romania. He is a Fellow of the American Powder
Metallurgy Institute. He was awarded the Skaupy
Prize in 2006. His research applies thermal
analysis tools to ferrous systems during sintering
to isolate the gas reactions that stabilize nitrides,
oxides, or carbides during the heating cycle. The
chemical reactions help understand the
microstructure and property relations, such as in
his study “Fatigue Behavior and Wear
Resistance of Sinter-Hardening Steels,”
International Journal of Powder Metallurgy, 2012,
vol. 48, no 5, pp. 49-60.
In assembling this review, critical
contributions were identified to
understand the framework for sintering
theory. Here are some of the author’s
findings obviously an opinion, but
hopefully an informed opinion :

68
 Ryuzo Watanabe probably a $25 billion industry in
sintered hard materials
Watanabe is emeritus professor at Tohoku
University. He was an early investigator of sintering
concepts in Japan, working initially under the  most important individual ‐
guidance of professor Yoshimichi Masuda. Their Wilhelm Ostwald, Professor of
landmark study published in Japanese in 1971 and Chemistry Leipzig University,
English in 1972, details microstructure evolution 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,
during sintering for a small iron powder over 5800
supervised three Nobel Prize
minutes in the body-centered cubic ferrite
structure: winners, described the progressive
coarsening of two phase systems
R. Watanabe, Y. Masuda, “Quantitative Estimation Ostwald Ripening ; trained key
of Structural Change in Carbonyl Iron Powder people and collaborated with
Compacts during Sintering,” Transactions of the
Japan Institute of Metals, 1972, vol. 13, pp. 134- leading individuals that impacted
139. sintering theory

That study identified cubic grain growth behavior, Akari Kawasaki
recorded porosity and grain boundary area
changes, and shift in pore type and shape. These Kawasaki is professor of materials processing on
detailed data were some of the first to range over the Faculty of Engineering at Tohoku University.
the full density spectrum, confirming the linear He is a disciple of the program developed by
relation between sintered density and surface area. Yoshimichi Masuda and Ryuzo Watanabe, with
He further promoted the treatment of grain growth focus on microsystems. He has taken the program
during sintering using Ostwald ripening concepts. into bulk amorphous metals, functional gradients,
thermo-electric materials, and hot consolidation
Watanabe served as professor at Tohoku routes such as hot pressing and thermal spray.
University, in the Department of Materials Further, his research is involved in mechanical
Processing. On his retirement, Akari Kawasaki alloying, composites, and fabrication of monosized
took over program leadership. Watanabe was particles. An early important study relating to
instrumental in the Japan Institute of Metals and metal injection molded structures quantified the
their extensive publication program. His research distortion and nonuniform shrinkage in
innovations included gas chromatography analysis complicated shapes using video imaging: Y.
during sintering, direct video imaging, particulate Mizuno, A. Kawasaki, R. Watanabe, “In Situ
composites such as boride reinforced tool steels, Measurement of Sintering Shrinkage in Powder
functional gradients, metal injection molding, and Compacts by Digital Image Correlation Method,”
use of pick-place robots to form idealized green Powder Metallurgy, 1995, vol. 38, pp. 191-195.
microstructures. He organized many events in This study relied on noncontact dilatometry to
Japan, organized the Sintering ’87 conference and capture the subtle dimensional changes taking
organized an Iron Powder Metallurgy conference in place during heating. Previously, the loading on
1999, with companion proceedings to both the measuring pushrod influenced the
meetings. measurement. Kawasaki has co-edited

proceedings on functional gradient materials and
is widely recognized in Japan for his contributions.
 most important invention ‐ Karl
Schroeter Schröter and Wilhelm
Jenssen, “Tool and Die,” US Patent  most important organization ‐
1,551,333, issued 25 August 1925, General Electric, based on several
assigned to General Electric, it innovations in sintered materials;
teaches the liquid phase sintering Edison light bulb , Acheson
of tungsten carbide WC using subsequently developed silicon
cobalt, iron, or nickel additions carbide , Coolidge tungsten
and initiated what is today filament , Langmuir vapor

69
 transport, Nobel Prize , Gilson Crystalline Solids. I. Intermediate
bearings , Schroeter WC‐Co , and Final State Diffusion Models”
Price heavy alloys , Smithells
metals reference book , Buswell
and Pitkins sintered superalloys ,
Bundy and Hall diamond , Coble
alumina , Burke grain‐pore ,
Wentoff cBN , Westerman
supersolidus , McIntyre halides , Gary Lynn Messing
Greskovich and Lay coalescence
growth , Prochazka doped Messing is professor and former head of
covalent , Rosolowski covalent materials science and engineering in the
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at the
ceramics Pennsylvania State University. His BS degree
was in ceramic engineering at Alfred
 most important university – University in 1973 and his doctorate was from
Massachusetts Institute of the University of Florida in 1977. He worked at
Battelle Columbus Laboratories prior to
Technology, involved in sintering moving to Penn State in 1980.
theory from earliest times and
involved several key players, His research on ceramic materials frequently
including William Coolidge resulted in attention to sintering. He headed
the Particulate Materials Center and Materials
tungsten , Irving Langmuir
Research Laboratory at Penn State, and the
tungsten , Willis Whitney GE later hosted activity on dielectric ceramics. He
CRD , Albert Sauveur has held several visiting positions in Australia,
microstructure , John Wulff France, Germany, and Switzerland. He
surface energy , P K Wretblad published over 250 papers, was editor of the
Journal of the American Ceramic Society, and
atomic model , Amos Shaler served as president of the American Ceramic
copper sintering , Cyril Stanley Society for one year. He has Fellow status in
Smith grain shape , David the society and is recognized with several
Kingery mechanistic model , awards.
Robert Coble alumina, grain
He has focused on optically transparent
boundary role , Daeyong Lee ceramics, piezoelectric ceramics, spray
computer model , I‐Wei Chen pyrolysis, cold sintering, and controlled crystal
nanoscale sintering growth during sintering. Messing largely
worked on oxide ceramics and treated
problems such as phase transformations and
 most cited publications – Randall seeded grain growth during sintering. One of
German Sintering Theory and his landmark papers deals with alpha alumina
Practice and Liquid Phase seeding in a transformed alumina to give full
Sintering, David Kingery density and a small grain size: M. Kumagai, G.
L. Messing, “Controlled Transformation and
“Densification during Sintering in Sintering of a Beohmite Sol-Gel by Alpha-
the Presence of a Liquid Phase. I. Alumina Seeding,” Journal of the American
Theory” and “Study of the Initial Ceramic Society, 1985, vol. 68, pp. 500-505.
Stages of Sintering Solids by

Viscous Flow, Evaporation‐
 most important decade ‐ 1960s
Condensation, and Self‐Diffusion,”
because of the combination of
and Robert Coble “Sintering
advances in sintering theory,

70
 textbooks, commercial growth for
example iron powder use for
automotive applications increased
three‐fold , significantly faster
than in any other decade, and new
observation tools such as hot Hideshi Miura
stage scanning electron
microscopy , and significant Miura was born 18 October 1950, in Sasebo,
increases in publications and Nagasaki, Japan. His BS, MS, and PhD degrees
were from Kyushu University in 1975, 1977, and
textbooks. In addition, several 1986, respectively. He served as professor in the
sintering variants emerged, department of intelligent machinery and systems
including supersolidus sintering of at the same school. He also served as
prealloyed powders and hot department head for mechanical engineering.
Miura guided several research efforts involving
isostatic pressing and other forms sintering, initially related to press-sinter ferrous
of pressure‐assisted sintering. In alloys, metal injection molded high strength
addition, significant progress took alloys, fatigue failure in sintered materials, and
place in computer simulation of recently laser additive manufacturing of titanium.
sintering, starting with neck The latter enables the application of sintering to
the construction of customized bone implants.
growth simulations that
progressed to density and In 1986, he moved to associate professor at
shrinkage calculations. Kumamoto University where he authored one
book on powder compaction and translated
Powder Metallurgy Science into Japanese. He
5.3. Qualitative Concepts  did a sabbatical with Randall German focused on
delivering forged mechanical properties in
Prior to emergence of quantitative sintered injection molded components. That work
led to the Technical Development Award from
sintering models, several qualitative rules the Japan Institute of Metals. Among his 20
were proposed. These concepts focused awards is the Japan Institute of Metals
the quantitative models. Some of the early Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2016, he
suggests seem odd in retrospect, such as: was selected as Fellow of the American Powder
Metallurgy Institute. Miura served as President of
 sintering has an onset temperature the Japan Society of Powder and Powder
and does not occur below this Metallurgy, and co-chaired the 2012 World
temperature, similar to a glass Congress in Powder Metallurgy. He has over 300
transition or melting temperature publications, 12 patents, and 20 edited books.

 only materials that undergo
polymorphic transitions during In 1942, Rhines 15 outlined the key
heating will sinter Fe, Co, and factors to be included in a quantitative
such sintering theory:
 melting temperature depression 1. the neck material is the same as
explains small particle sintering the parent material in terms of
 sintering occurs by plastic flow atoms, bonding, and properties
due to the increasing surface 2. pressure acts to increase the
energy on heating. bonding and coordination and to
dislodge interfering films between
particles

71
 points between particles and the
grain growth rate increases in
proportion to the rate of sintering
6. late stage sintering involves the
deposition of atoms into pores,
Seong Jin Park causing pore closure
7. changes in properties due to
Seong Jin Park is professor in the Mechanical sintering are reflections of
Engineering Department of Pohang Science and structural changes and do not have
Technology University (POSTECH) in Pohang,
Korea. There he serves several roles, including any unique aspects attributed to
head of the Venture Innovation program and sintering.
associate dean for Research Affairs.
To a point the observations by Rhines
He attended POSTECH for all of his degrees,
finishing his PhD in 1996. After employment at
accurate, but grain boundary diffusion is
LG Electronics, he served as research professor missing and plastic flow is over
at Penn State and rose to be associate professor emphasized. Diffusion of atoms by
at Mississippi State University prior to his 2009 vacancy exchange was theoretically
return to POSTECH. He helped form the firm established that same year by Huntington
CetaTech, focused on computer modeling of
sintering processes and related forming and Seitz 16,17 . They used copper as the
approaches – hot isostatic pressing, die model, and a few years later George
compaction, and injection molding. Most recently, Kuczynski 18 performed neck growth
he has taken up bio-inspired design and married and diffusion calculations using copper.
that to microminiature metal injection molding to
innovate new medical devices. He is active in
His model did not include vacancy
training students, international collaboration, and annihilation so it failed to explain
professional development with more than 300 shrinkage. Yet copper swelling late in
publications. He is co-author of the Handbook of sintering led to the speculation that gas
Mathematical Relations in Particulate Materials accumulation in the pores induced plastic
Processing and co-authored the Metals
Handbook sections on modeling powder flow 55 .
metallurgy processes. He reflects the emerging
use of sintering to form novel, high-value Surface energy and the idea of a sintering
products for electronics, dental, medical, and stress arose during the 1940s and 1950s.
specialty applications.
In 1945, Yakov Ilich Frenkel 1894‐1952
20,21 relied on an analogy between
3. initial neck growth occurs by diffusion and viscous flow to generate a
lateral expansion of the neck two‐particle neck growth model. Ignoring
under surface energy; surface crystal structure meant no grain
diffusion is initially dominant with boundary formed in the interparticle
some plastic flow, both diminish bond. Accordingly, the Frenkel model
with time works for plastics and glass, but fails to
4. swelling or compact growth is explain the sintering of crystalline
associated with gas evolution and materials. This came under attack by
gas trapped in pores causing contemporary researchers, including
plastic flow George Kuczynski, who favored a
5. recovery, recrystallization, and diffusion process. In turn, Kuczynski was
grain growth are typical aspects of attacked because his sintering model did
sintering that initiate at contact not give densification.
72
 Robert Louis Coble (1928-1992)
Coble was born 22 January 1928, in Uniontown,
Pennsylvania, and died 27 August 1992, in a
sailing accident off the coast of Maui, Hawaii.
Coble grew up in Pennsylvania and attained his
bachelor’s degree in physics from Bethany
College in West Virginia in 1950. After two years
in the Army paratroopers, he completed his PhD
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955
as a student of David Kingery.
After his PhD he joined the General Electric
Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York.
There he worked for Joseph Burke (1914-2000)
on aluminum oxide for lighting. Coble made
significant contributions to alumina sintering and
the idea of densification by grain boundary
diffusion. He discovered magnesia doped
alumina known as Lucalox (US Patent
3,026,210). Pore-free translucent alumina
requires exceptionally high temperature sintering
in hydrogen where rapid grain growth causes
isolated pores. Lucalox is part of the yellow-
orange sodium vapor lamps widely used in
outdoor parking and street lighting.
Coble returned to MIT as an assistant professor
of ceramics in 1960 and reached full professor in
1969, retiring in 1988. He took temporary
positions in Japan and Washington, DC, and
took a Humbolt Stiftung funded visit with Gunther
Petzow at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart,
Germany.
Coble made several outstanding contributions,
including a model for sintering by grain boundary
diffusion, creep by grain boundary diffusion,
conceptualized reactive sintering, and created a
model for late stage sintering densification. He
published 114 papers, supervised 24 MS and 43
PhD degrees. He was awarded membership in
the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of
the American Ceramic Society, and was
designated Ceramist of the Year in 1976 by the
National Institute of Ceramic Engineers.
Yakov Ilich Frenkel (1894-1952)
Frenkel was born 10 February 1894 in Rostov-
on-Don, Russia, and died on 23 January 1952, in
St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1909, his family
moved to St. Petersburg where he studied at St.
Petersburg University, graduating in 1912. He
became a professor in physics and astrophysics
in 1916, studying the earth’s magnetic and
electrical attributes.
In 1916, he became an assistant professor at
Tavricheskiy University in the Simferopol,
Crimea, but moved back to St. Petersburg in
1921, where he remained at the Physico-
Technical Institute until his death. There he wrote
20 books. In 1929, he was elected to
corresponding member of the USSR Academy of
Sciences. During 1930-1931, he was visiting
professor at the University of Minnesota.
Frenkel made broad contributions. For example,
lattice defects are called Frenkel vacancies as a
testimonial to his insight as atomic theory
emerged. Other contributions were in metal
physics, kinetic models for liquids, nuclear
physics, electric conduction, nucleation theory,
and semiconductor behavior. He relied on others
for experimentation.
He made an important contribution to sintering in
the 1940s, assuming the surface energy loss
from particle bonding depended on the viscous
energy dissipation. Although the original paper
had an error, the conceptualization was
important to sintering models for crystalline
solids. He treated solids at viscous liquids based
on his conjecture that creep was a void diffusion
process. The volume change experienced on
melting was taken as evidence of a large
increase in vacancy population, so viscous flow
was his means to explain sintering. The
mathematical linkage between viscosity and
diffusivity had previously arisen in 1905, but that
was prior to acceptance of atomic models. The
Frenkel viscous flow model is confirmed for
polymers, glasses, and amorphous materials.
73
In retrospect, the viscosity‐diffusivity For example, microwave sintering. The
linkage was a reinvention of the idea first reports came in the early 1980s, and
promoted in 1905 by Albert Einstein later whole conferences took place on
1879‐1955 and others in the form of the ceramic processed using microwave
Einstein‐Stokes equation. The initial heating. Subsequently, Rustrum Roy
sense was the shear stress and shear gained attention for applying microwave
strain rate were proportional, with sintering to metals 22 . Subsequent
viscosity being the constitutive factor. study verifies property gains, but most is
The simple linear relation between shear attributed to a higher retained carbon
stress and shear strain rate came from level and faster cooling, not a new
Isaac Newton. That model was refined by sintering mechanism 23 .
Eugene Bingham to include a threshold
yield strength. Indeed, Bingham flow with First reports on plasma heating for
a small yield strength, is a better sintering came in the late 1960s. Plasma
representation of sintering behavior, such heating remains an experimental idea.
as densification and distortion. This is
especially evident in solid‐liquid sintering Activated sintering is a similar topic.
systems. Otherwise, if the component Initial reports in the 1960s used tungsten
lacked yield strength it would from a treated with nickel. Models for activated
puddle in the sintering furnace. Measured sintering awaited developments on
values for the flow stress are 0.2 to 2 MPa electron transfer in segregated grain
when a compact densifies. boundary films based on ideas from Leo
Brewer 24,25 and Grigorli Samsonov
From the qualitative framework, a burst 26 . These concepts explain how
of models followed with a simultaneous tungsten, molybdenum, rhenium, and
surge in sintering applications and other refractory metals diffuse much
materials. The applications include faster in the presence of small 0.1 to 0.3
several cases mentioned already. wt.% levels of transition metals such as
iron, cobalt, nickel, and palladium 27 .
Subsequent decades detailed research on
microstructure control and emergence of Likewise, the material complexity
several important experimental and increased as sintering embraced
computational tools. By the 1980s, composites and multiple layer structures.
sintering research often focused on ways In the past decade, leading efforts have
to make the process faster, better, and focused on novel powders nanoscale ,
more energy efficient, using additives, electronic components heat sinks,
controlling impurities, and applying superconductors, interconnects , new
external forces. additive shaping technologies ink jet,
laser, electron , and applications such as
Recently the direction in sintering tissue scaffolds for implants.
research has been toward electronic
applications, while the available heating In the next section, the emergence of
techniques expand to include laser, quantitative sintering models is taken up
infrared, induction, microwave, and in detail based on atomic theory,
plasma energy sources. Some of these materials engineering, and geometric
approaches are rediscoveries of old ideas. models.
74
 11 G. A. Geach, A. A. Woolf, “The Sintering
Section References  Behavior of Organic Materials,” Powder
Metallurgy, W. Leszynski ed. , Interscience, New
1 F. R. Hensel, E. I. Larsen, E. F. Wazy, “Physical York, NY, 1961, pp. 201‐206.
Properties of Metal Compositions with a
Refractory Metal Base,” Powder Metallurgy, J. 12 S. Hambir, J. P. Jog, “Sintering of ultra‐high
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2 P. Schwarzkopf, Powder Metallurgy Its Physics 13 C. R. Deckard, Method and Apparatus for
and Production, Macmillan, New York, NY, 1947, Producing Parts by Selective Sintering, U. S. Patent
pp. 199‐212. 5,316,580, issued 31 May 1994.

3 C. G. Goetzel, Treatise on Powder Metallurgy, 14 D. L. Bourell, J. J. Beaman, “Powder Material
vol. 1, Interscience, New York, NY, 1949, pp. 259‐ Principles Applied to Additive Manufacturing,”
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Porosity for Cesium‐Ion Engines,” Modern 537‐544.
Developments in Powder Metallurgy, vol. 2, H. H.
Hausner ed. , Plenum Press, New York, NY, 1966, 15 F. N. Rhines, “Seminar on the Theory of
pp. 309‐319. Sintering,” Transactions of the Metallurgical
Society of the American Institute of Mining,
5 P. Duwez, H. E. Martin, “The Powder Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, 1946, vol.
Metallurgy of Porous Metals and Alloys Having a 166, pp. 474‐491.
Controlled Porosity,” Transactions of the
Metallurgical Society of the American Institute of 16 H. B. Huntington, F. Seitz, “Mechanism for
Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, Self‐Diffusion in Metallic Copper,” Physical
1948, vol. 175, pp. 848‐877. Review, 1942, vol. 61, pp. 315‐325.

6 G. H. Haertling, “Ferroelectric Ceramics: 17 H. B. Huntington, “Self‐Consistent Treatment
History and Technology,” Journal of the American of the Vacancy Mechanism for Metallic Diffusion,”
Ceramic Society, 1999, vol. 82, pp. 797‐818. Physical Review, 1942, vol. 61, pp. 325‐338.

7 L. Delisle, W. V. Knopp, “Nickel Steels by 18 G. C. Kuczynski, “Self‐Diffusion in Sintering of
Powder Metallurgy,” Transactions of the Metallic Particles,” Transactions of the American
Metallurgical Society of the American Institute of Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum
Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, Engineers, 1949, vol. 185, pp. 169‐178.
1948, vol. 175, pp.791‐812.
19 R. Watanabe, Y. Masuda, “Quantitative
8 F. V. Lenel, “Oil Pump Gears,” Powder Estimation of Structural Change in Carbonyl Iron
Metallurgy, J. Wulff ed. , American Society for Powder Compacts during Sintering,” Transactions
Metals, Cleveland, OH, 1942, pp. 502‐511. of the Japan Institute of Metals, 1972, vol. 13, pp.
134‐139.
9 J. F. Kuzmick, E. N. Mazza, “Studies on Control
of Growth or Shrinkage of Iron‐Copper Compacts 20 J. Frenkel, “Viscous Flow of Crystalline Bodies
During Sintering,” Transactions of the American under the Action of Surface Tension,” Journal of
Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Physics, 1945, vol. 9, pp. 385‐391.
Engineers, 1950, vol. 188, pp. 1218‐1219.
21 M. M. Ristic, “Sintering ‐ Past and Present On
10 L. F. Pease, W. G. West, Fundamentals of the 40th Anniversary of the Belgrade School of
Powder Metallurgy, Metal Powder Industries Sintering ,“ Science of Sintering, 2001, vol. 33, pp.
Federation, Princeton, NJ, 2002. 143‐147.

75
 22 R. Roy, D. Agrawal, J. Cheng, S. Gedevanishvili, I-Wei Chen
“Full Sintering of Powdered Metal Bodies in a
Microwave Field,” Nature, 1999, vol. 399, pp. 668‐ I-Wei Chen is chaired professor in the
670. Department of Materials Science and
Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
23 M. J. Yang, R. M. German, “Comparison of He was educated at MIT. His research on
Conventional Sintering and Microwave Sintering nanoscale sintered devices discovered a two-
of Two Ferrous Alloys,” Advances in Powder step sintering cycle to reduce grain growth while
Metallurgy and Particulate Materials ‐ 1999, vol. 1, reaching full density. The idea is to heat to a
Metal Powder Industries Federation, Princeton, temperature where grain boundary diffusion is
NJ, 1999, pp. 3.207‐3.219. active to promote densification, but as full
density is approached the temperature is
24 J. K. Gibson, L. Brewer, K. A. Gingerich, reduced to minimize grain growth. For narrow
“Thermodynamics of Several Lewis‐Acid‐Base particle size structures, the approach is effective
Stabilized Transition Metal Alloys,” Metallurgical in preserving the nanoscale structure. Chen is
Transactions, 1984, vol. 15A pp. 2075‐2085. recognized by the American Ceramic Society as
a Fellow. The applications of his research are
25 L. Brewer, “Prediction of Transition Metal related to electronic properties, thermoelectrics,
Phase Diagrams,” Journal of Nuclear Materials, and fluorescent colloids.
1974, vol. 51, pp. 2‐11.


26 G. V. Samsonov, I. F. Pryadko, L. F. Pryadko, A
Configurational Model of Matter, Consultants
Bureau, New York, NY, 1977. Hillard Bell Huntington (1910-1992)

27 R. M. German, Z. A. Munir, “Heterodiffusion Huntington, born 21 December 1910, in Wilkes
Model for the Activated Sintering of Barre, Pennsylvania, developed vacancy
Molybdenum,” Journal of the Less‐Common diffusion concepts now embedded in sintering
Metals, 1978, vol. 58, pp. 61‐74. theory. He did his BS, MS, and PhD work in
physics at Princeton University, finishing in
1941. He held faculty positions at several
  institutions, joining the physics faculty at
Albert Sauveur (1863-1939) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute about the same
time as Fritz Lenel arrived in 1947. From 1961 to
Sauveur was born on 21 June 1863, in Louvain, 1968 he was chair of the physics department.
Belgium. He was educated at the Liege School of One of his students, Ivar Giaever, won a Nobel
Mines between 1881 and 1886, and then moved to Prize in physics, reportedly based on a
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in classroom lecture given by Huntington.
Cambridge, finishing a BS in 1889. From there he Huntington retired in 1976, but continued his
went to work in steel mills in Pennsylvania and research until 1988. His landmark paper on the
Illinois. His first publication on the microstructure of activation energy for copper vacancy diffusion
steel is dated 1893. As his skills and reputation was submitted to Physical Review on 6
expanded, Sauveur became the pioneer in December 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor: H.
microscopy examination of steels. He was B. Huntington, “Self-Consistent Treatment of the
involved with Harvard University from 1899 in Vacancy Mechanism for Metallic Diffusion,”
various positions, starting as an instructor, Physical Review, 1942, vol. 61, pp. 325-338. He
assistant professor, and finally professor from took up the theory of electromigration and found
1905 to 1924, and Gordon McKay Professor from failures in direct current microelectronic circuits
1924 to 1935. He wrote Metallography and Heat reduced in the presence of hydrogen. His ideas
Treatment of Iron and Steel (1912). Elected to on electromigration provide an explanation for
National Academy of Sciences, his honors include some of the observations related to spark
many awards and special lectures. He died in 26 sintering of metals. Huntington died of cancer in
January 1939 in Boston, Massachusetts. Troy, New York, on 17 July 1992.

76

Frederick Seitz (1911-2008)
Seitz was born on 4 July 1911, in San Francisco,
California. He passed away at age 96 on 2
March 2008, in New York City. He studied at
Stanford University with a BS degree in 1932. At
Princeton, he studied under Eugene Wigner,
receiving his doctorate in 1934 for a first
quantum theory for crystals and construction of
the Wigner-Seitz crystal unit cell.
He worked at the University of Rochester (1935-
1937), General Electric Research Laboratories
(1937-1939), University of Pennsylvania (1939-
1942), and Carnegie Institute of Technology
(1942-1949), and was assigned to the Oak
Ridge Laboratory. He moved to the University of
Illinois, first as professor of physics in 1949, then
department chair, dean, and vice president of
research.
With his student Hilliard Huntington, he
calculated the vacancy formation energy in
copper. Subsequently Huntington compared the
corresponding vacancy migration energy to the
self-interstitial and ring migration energies to
establish vacancy migration as the diffusion
mechanism for copper. Diffusion provided the
basis for Kuczynski’s two particle sintering
model.
Seitz went on to great fame, serving as president
of the National Academy of Sciences (1962-
1965) and president of Rockefeller University
(1968-1978). He was involved in forming the
Fermilab particle accelerator. He was recipient of
the National Medal of Science, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration
Distinguished Public Service Award, and is cited
as the one who started the Materials Research
Laboratory at the University of Illinois. He won
32 honorary doctorates and the top prize from
the American Institute of Physics. Seitz was
involved in many high profile topics such as the
USA role in Vietnam, nuclear arms policy, global
warming, neuroscience, and tobacco’s role in
lung cancer.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
I was surprised to learn that Einstein touched on
sintering concepts via his model for diffusion
and viscous flow. Henry Hausner tells of giving
Einstein an introduction to powder metallurgy.
Einstein was born 14 March 1879, in Ulm,
Germany, and died 18 April 1955 at 76 in
Princeton, New Jersey. He attended the Swiss
Federal Polytechnic and did his PhD at the
University of Zurich. Popular books describe his
theoretical conjectures, such as the E = mc2
equation, giving the energy equivalence for
mass. His efforts resulted in about every major
prize given to a scientist. Einstein won the 1921
Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the
photoelectric effect as an underpinning to
quantum theory. He relocated to the USA in
1933, to escape the anti-Jewish movement, and
became a citizen in 1940.
He held many positions, but is famous for his
service at the Swiss Patent Office where he
authored landmark papers in 1905 –
photoelectric effect, special relatively, Brownian
motion, and matter-energy equivalence. After
1908, he largely worked for universities and
research institutes, ending with the Institute for
Advanced Study located in Princeton, New
Jersey. There he collaborated with Robert
Oppenheimer, former head of the Manhattan
Project. Einstein alerted President Roosevelt of
the possible use of nuclear reactions for wartime
purposes, leading to the Manhattan Project and
the onset of atomic bombs. Teller then followed
with the more powerful hydrogen bomb.
His impact on sintering theory was through his
conjecture on the inverse relation between
atomic diffusion and viscous flow. It is common
to treat sintering with viscosity models.
Computer models use effective viscosity to
calculate the densification and distortion for a
component based on the combination of gravity,
surface energy, capillarity, substrate friction, and
other effects. Einstein was named Time
magazine Person of the Century.
77
 Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
Newton affects sintering theory through his work
on viscous flow. He was born prematurely in
Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, on 25
December 1642 (4 January 1643, in the modern
calendar). His father died three months after his
birth and three years later his mother married,
moved, and left Newton with his grandmother,
but his mother returned eight years later. This
uncertainty in his early life is often suspected to
have influenced Newton’s erratic behavior.
Newton was educated at Trinity College in
Cambridge and became a Fellow in 1661. In his
early years, he made several remarkable
discoveries. During the plague years, while
absent from Cambridge, he worked on gravity
and lunar motion. Edmond Halley stirred Newton
to write this work, published as Principia
Mathematica in 1687. After 1692, Newton was
ill, suffered from insomnia and nervous
problems, so in 1695 he moved to Wardenship
of the Mint. He was a Fellow of the Royal
Society and often visited with royalty in London.
He died in London on 31 March 1727. He is
buried in Westminster Abby. Generally, he was
regarded as a genius, but proved difficult.
He conjectures on the response of a fluid to
steady shearing is now termed Newtonian flow –
strain rate is proportional to stress. This was in
contrast with the concept of Robert Hooke that
conjectured proportional stress and strain.
Hooke was correct in terms of low temperature
elastic response, but Newtonian was correct for
high temperatures and slurries. Frenkel’s model
for sintering as a viscous flow process under the
action of surface tension was an important step
for sintering, but he needed a Bingham model to
correctly explain sintering densification, even for
thermoplastic polymers, as reported years later
by Kuczynski, et al., “Study of Sintering of Poly
(Methyl Methacrylate),” Journal of Applied
Polymer Science, 1970, vol. 14, pp. 2069-2077.
Recent models expanded the viscous flow
concept to explain sintering densification of alloy
systems, especially in supersolidus sintering.
Eugene Cook Bingham (1878-1945)
Bingham was born on 8 December 1878, in
Cornwall, Vermont, USA. He was educated at
Middlebury College, graduating in 1899, and
then attended Johns Hopkins University for a
PhD in 1905. He then visited the University of
Leipzig, University of Berlin, and University of
Cambridge before joining the faculty at
Richmond College in Vermont from 1906 to
1915. He moved to a position at the US Bureau
of Standards in Washington, DC, for a year. In
1916, he joined Lafayette College in Easton,
Pennsylvania, and retired as department head
in 1939, but remained a research professor until
his death on 6 November 1945. Bingham
conceptualized material flow under stress as a
combination of viscosity and plasticity, resulting
in his book Fluidity and Plasticity. He also
formed the Society of Rheology.
Bingham flow is a combination of Newtonian
viscous flow that occurs after an applied stress
exceeds the yield strength. This idea is ideal for
computer models of sintering. Frenkel
suggested the idea of substituting viscous flow
for diffusion to explain sintering for amorphous
materials. This set the stage for the Kuczynski
model of two spheres sintering by surface
transport (surface diffusion or volume diffusion
from surface sources) without densification.
However, the issue of component densification
while preserving shape was untouched until the
MacKenzie and Shuttleworth model of 1949 [“A
Phenomenological Theory of Sintering,”
Proceedings of the Physical Society, 1949, vol.
62, pp. 833-852.]. Subsequent theories of
sintering largely adopted a Bingham model.
Like many parts of sintering theory, enabling
groundwork was required. Rheological science
was one such area. It is common to assume
diffusion-controlled densification but more
convenience to use a viscous flow model.
Shape preservation during sintering suggests a
small but finite onset yield stress, akin to
Bingham flow. In situ measurements confirm
crystalline materials have a small, but
measurable yield stress during densification.
78
 Rustum Roy (1924-2010)
Roy was born on 3 July 1924, in Ranchi, India,
and died on 26 August 2010, in State College,
Pennsylvania. His BS and MS were from Patna
University in 1942 and 1944, and his PhD was
from Pennsylvania State College in 1948. He
remained on the faculty at Penn State, but also
had an appointment in Arizona.
Often Roy had outlandish ideas, some of which
proved quite successful while others resulted in a
loss of credibility. One of his favorite sayings was
that the US National Science Foundation was
“welfare for scientists”. His accomplishments
included forming the Materials Research Society
and guiding the Penn State materials research
center, but that ended in a legal dispute over
financial problems. His efforts in sintering were
largely on ceramics. During the 1990s, Roy
worked on microwave sintering of ceramics, then
metals. Microwave sintering of ceramics started in
1968, so turning to metals was novel. He
generated of over 1000 articles, was a member of
the National Academy of Engineering, and the
Materials Research Society designated an award
in his honor.
Grigorii Valentinovich Samsonov (1918-1975)
Samsonov was born on 15 Feb 1918, and died at
the age of 58, in 1975. Samsonov received his BS
degree from the Nonferrous Metals Institute in
Moscow, and then served in the Soviet Navy
during World War II. Since he spoke German, he
was assigned to the Soviet occupation forces in
Austria, where he became familiar with refractory
metals and compounds.
His doctorate came from the Institute of Steel and
Alloys but he worked in Kiev at the Institute of
Powder Metallurgy. He subsequently became a
member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
and professor at Kiev Institute of Technology.
Over about 25 years, he published 1500 articles
and 50 monographs on refractory compounds.
His influence on sintering came from many
studies on high temperature compounds,
including carbides, nitrides, and intermetallics. He
extensively studied activated sintering of
refractory metals. He won the Plansee Medal,
given by the Austrian company that
commercialized some of the same materials he
examined in his research.
79
 Leo Brewer (1919-2005)

Brewer was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 13 June

1919. After completing his bachelors in chemistry
in 1940 at the California Institute of Technology
under Linus Pauling, took his PhD at the University
of California Berkeley. He finished in 28 months. In
1942, he joined the Manhattan Project with the
assignment to find a crucible material for molten
plutonium. Plutonium did not exist yet, so none of
the molten properties were known. His solution
was to use cerium sulfide. This began his career
as a high temperature chemist who predicted
material properties and the behavior of new
materials. He was unique for his focus on metals,
leading to predictive approaches to intermetallics
and compounds based on valance electron
configurations.

In 1946, Brewer joined the University of California

Berkeley chemistry faculty, becoming full professor
in 1955. He remained on the faculty for 60 years.
During the 1950s, he lost eyesight in his right eye,
possibly from a laboratory exposure. From 1961 to
1975, he served as director of the inorganic
materials division of the Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory. The idea of predicting metal
properties, such as crystal structure and diffusion
based on periodic chart position enabled much
success in identification of reactive species and
explaining sintering behavior. He supervised 41
PhD theses and published more than 200 articles
and authored a textbook.

He was elected to the National Academy of

Sciences, and won the Robert O. Lawrence Award
from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961, and
other awards. He died on 22 February 2005, in
Lafayette, California at the age of 85, reportedly
from complications tracing back to beryllium
exposure during his days working in the Manhattan
Project.

80
6. Necessary Infrastructure   flow was a new idea. Finally, means to
measure, quantify, and specify properties

and processing cycles needed new tools.
We now turn attention to the concepts
Each of these developments was part of
underpinning sintering theory. Earlier
the required infrastructure.
sections looked at early empirical

applications and qualitative ideas, while
this section delves into critical
infrastructure developments ‐ atomic
structure, surface energy, diffusion,
microstructure evolution, and property
measurement.

To understand the evolution of
contemporary sintering models requires
determination of how the underpinnings
arose. At a first glance, it might not be
obvious why the two‐particle models by
Frenkel, Kuczynski, Kingery, and others
delayed to the 1940s and later. In short,
the building blocks behind these models
were missing. For example, Coble’s 1961
final stage sintering model 1 , required
microstructure assumptions, namely the Figure 6.1. The tetrakaidecahedron grain
1952 tetrakaidecahedron grain idea of shape with pores located on the grain
Williams and Smith 2 . Pore closure, corners in final stage sintering.
from continuous open pores located on
grain edges to closed spherical pores 6.1. Atomic Theory 
occupying grain corners, required fluid

breakup ideas developed by Lord
In the late 1600s, Robert Hooke proposed
Rayleigh 3 . Figure 6.1 is an idealized 14‐
matter consisted of a building block
sided grain with spherical pores on the
simple unit cell. Like bricks, unit cells
corners, corresponding to the final stage
describe the simple repeat segments. His
of sintering. In the intermediate stage of
studies also describe elasticity, giving a
sintering the edges of the grain consist of
relation between stress and strain known
tubular pores.
as Hooke’s law. The elastic or Young’s

modulus is the material parameter linking
Sintering theory awaited development of
stress and strain.
a broad materials science foundation.

First there had to be acceptance of
John Dalton conjectured atomic structure
Dalton’s atomic theory, and then
to explain stoichiometric reactions. In
realization of how atoms form crystals.
1803, Dalton described five observations
The identification of defects in crystals
in favor of atoms and atom reactions. His
came next, and then motion of atoms and
ideas focused on compound formation,
defects gave diffusion. Further,
such as water and ammonia. An example
acceptance of surface energy driven mass
of the early atomic concept is shown in
81
Figure 6.2, which is insightful considering
the speculative nature of atoms and
crystals.

(Lord Rayleigh) John William Strutt (1842-

1919)

Strutt was born 12 November 1842, in Essex,

England. As the third Baron of Rayleigh, he was
a member of the nobility from birth. With
interruptions for poor health, he studied at Eaton
and other schools. He entered Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1861, with an emphasis on
mathematics, graduating in 1865. Due to
rheumatic fever, he traveled to Egypt and
Greece in 1872, returning for his father’s death
in 1873. His inherited estate consisted of 7000
acres, managed by his brother.
With his time open for science, Lord Rayleigh
took the James Clerk Maxwell professorship at
Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in 1879.
After five years, he moved to Terling, Essex, and
from 1887 to 1905, he was professor of natural
philosophy at Cambridge and chancellor of
Cambridge University from 1908 to 1919. He
discovered argon, explained why the sky is blue,
and predicted surface sound waves. Thomson
was one of his doctoral students, who won the
1906 Nobel Prize; in turn, Thomson had several
notable students, including Rutherford,
Oppenheimer, Bragg, and Born.
Lord Rayleigh was involved in several fields of
science and published broadly. One of his 446
papers dealt with the breakup of fluid jets and
this proved critical to sintering. His treatment of
streams pinching into discrete droplets formed
the basis for predicting pore transitions to closed
pores during sintering, now termed the Rayleigh
instability. It is also seen in atomization.
Lord Rayleigh died at the age of 76 on 30 June
1919, at Witham, Essex, England. He had many
honors and was a member of the House of
Lords, Justice of the Peace, Fellow of the Royal
Society, President of the Royal Society, and won
the Nobel Prize in 1904, among other prizes.
Figure 6.2. Dalton’s early
conceptualization of atomic structure in
terms of repeating units, which proved
quite accurate.
From this early base, the concept of
atomic structure struggled until the 1905
theory of Brownian motion by Albert
Einstein 4 . That paper shows the
random motion of small particles is
explained by a distribution in energies
among the surrounding atoms. That same
year Einstein also proposed relativity and
the quantum photoelectric effect, for
which he won the 1921 Nobel Prize.
Measurements by Jean Baptiste Perrin
confirmed the atomic structure.
Incidentally, Perrin also measured
Avogadro’s number, the number of atoms
per mol, which resulted in the 1926 Nobel
Prize. Perrin was the faculty advisor to
Pierre Victor Auger who became famous
for developing Auger Spectroscopy for
surface chemical analysis using low
energy electrons.
Several subsequent developments make a
convincing story for atomic theory. One
came from Max von Laue 1879‐1960 , a
German scientist who studied under Max
Planck 1850‐1947 . He laid the basis
82
using X‐rays to examine atomic full conceptualization of the atomic
assemblies in solid‐state structures, structure and the idea that solid crystals
resulting in a 1914 Nobel Prize. consisting of atoms emerged. Once atomic
structure was accepted, then defects were
allowed, and finally defect motion
followed to give diffusion.

John Dalton (1766-1844)

Dalton was an English chemist with an early

conceptualization of atomic structure. He was
born 6 September 1766, in Eaglesfield, Robert Hooke (1863-1703)
England, and died at age 77 years on 27 July
1844, in Manchester, England. The son of a Hooke was born on 18 July 1635, on the Isle of
weaver, he was schooled by Quakers. Dalton Wright. His education included study at
moved to Manchester in 1793, where he taught Waldham College and Oxford University, and he
mathematics and natural philosophy. He worked in the laboratory of Thomas Willis and
developed theories for atmosphere circulation Robert Boyle. He built telescopes, microscopes,
and worked on color blindness. One of his vacuum pumps, and studied biological
students was James Joule. evolution, wave behavior, gravity, and the
behavior of solids.
His influence on sintering comes from his work
on atomic theory and the idea of atomic volume In engineering, Hooke is best known for the
used in sintering models. The growth of a linear elastic relation between stress and strain,
sintering neck is one atom at a time, so the termed Hooke’s law, which is applicable up to
atomic volume and the diffusion flux determine the yield stress. The elastic modulus is also
the neck growth rate. Dalton’s atomic concept known as Young’s modulus. The relation arose
arose from observations on steam and related in 1660 with publication in 1678. The 18 year
vapors. He observed gas expansion on heating delay provoked a dispute over priority, but
and concluded that individual elements created history gives credit to Hooke. It is a law that
the compounds, such as carbon dioxide, allowed quantitative treatment of engineering
ammonia, and water. This led to his suggestion materials using simple design rules. Hooke took
of multiple proportions or stoichiometry. on many other topics and became a Fellow of
Unfortunately, he deemed water as HO and not the Royal Society. He died in London on 3
H2O, but Dalton was correct in his concepts. March 1703, at age 67.


The father‐son team of William Henry The next major contribution came from
Bragg 1862‐1942 and William Linus Pauling of California Institute of
Lawrence Bragg 1890‐1971 at the Technology via publication of his book
University of Cambridge confirmed The Nature of the Chemical Bond in 1939.
atomic crystallinity. This father‐son team This book links atomic bonding to crystal
produced Bragg’s law, the relation that structure. Pauling won unshared Nobel
details atomic spacing and the angle of Prizes in 1954 and 1962, the latter for
constructive diffraction for crystal. The peace. Therefore, by the 1940s atomic
relation relies on monochromatic structure was accepted and explained for
radiation. Their efforts resulted in a 1915 crystalline solids. The next step relied on
Nobel Prize. Thus, from a slow start, a defects in the structure and how defect
burst of activity in the early 1900s gave a motion allows atomic diffusion.

83
 theory as a fundamental underpinning for
the construction of sintering theory.

Jean Baptiste Perrin (1870-1942)

Perrin was born in Lille, France, on 30

September 1870. He attended Cole Normal
Superior as an assistant in physics between
1894 and 1897. He became involved in cathode
rays and X-rays for his doctorate in 1897. He
moved to an entry readership in physical
chemistry at the University of Paris (Sorbonne),
rising to professor in 1910. During 1914 to 1918,
he served in the French army engineering corps,
returning to his faculty position until 1940, when
Germany invaded France and he escaped to the
USA. He died in New York City on 17 April 1942
at the age of 71.
Linus C. Pauling (1901-1994)
Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon, on 28
February 1901, and died in Big Sur, California on
19 August 1994, of prostate cancer. His BS in
chemical engineering was granted by Oregon
Agricultural College (Oregon State University).
His PhD was in mathematical physics and
chemistry from California Institute of Technology
in 1925. Further study was on quantum
mechanics in Europe.

Perrin studied the role of X-rays on gases, He taught at Caltech up to 1963 and held short
florescence, radioactive decay, and Brownian appointments at University of California San
motion. The latter confirmed Einstein’s Diego (1967-1969) and Stanford University
predictions for how atoms move. From his (1969-1975). During his career he was awarded
research, a calculation of Avogadro’s number two Nobel Prizes. He is widely credited with
emerged. The proof that matter consists of small developing quantum chemistry and explaining the
but discrete atoms led to the 1926 Nobel Prize. nature of chemical bonding. This foundation led
to concepts of atomic motion and eventually
His efforts were fundamental to scientific sintering. Indeed, many of the later developments
acceptance of atomic theory for solids. Parallel in sintering theory required understanding how
efforts on diffusion helped define a new covalent ceramics were very different in sintering
understanding of sintering. Yet, it took almost a versus ionic ceramics and metals.

half century until vacancy diffusion was fully
accepted and neck growth models emerged to
explain particle bonding. Perrin wrote an early 6.2. Surface Energy 
atomic theory book. His accomplishments were
recognized in several forums, including the
Surface energy and surface tension are
Joule Prize of the Royal Society. He received
honorary degrees from universities around the common ideas for liquids. With respect to
world – Brussels, Calcutta, Ghent, Liege, sintering small powders the concept of
Manchester, New York, Oxford, and Princeton. surface energy was not initially accepted.

In other words, the motive force for
In retrospect, we realize sintering theory pulling particles together during sintering
builds on a platform supported by atomic was missing. Finally, concepts of surface
theory. The efforts to construct atomic energy arose to explain sintering by the
theory in the first half of the 1900s far early 1940s.
overshadows the developments in
sintering. The sequence of distinctions, In 1942, Wretblad and Wulff 5
especially the sequence of Noble Prizes, calculated how surface energy might be
illustrates the importance of atomic sufficient to induce plastic flow, hoping to
explain sintering densification. This was

84
part of a series of efforts emerging from Conyers Herring (1914-2009)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
John Wulff went on to have considerable Herring was born 15 November 1914, in Scotia,
New York, and died 23 July 2009, in Palo Alto,
influence on materials science education, California, living to be 94 years old. His doctoral
spearheading the migration from degree from Princeton came in 1937, where he
metallurgy to materials science and studied under Nobel Prize winner Eugene
engineering. Wigner. In 1946, he joined the technical staff of
Bell Laboratories and remained there until 1978,
when he moved to Stanford University.
In 1945, Russian scientist Yakov Ilich
Frenkel made major advances on two Herring made contributions to fundamental solid-
fronts relevant to sintering. One was a state science including volume diffusion
conjecture on how surface energy controlled creep, frequently called Nabarro-
Herring creep. His impact on sintering came in
induced viscous flow creep of crystals at the form of three basic papers. The first dealt
high temperatures 6 . The second with how sintering time varies with particle size,
advance was his two‐particle sintering what is termed the Herring Scaling Law: C.
model for viscous flow neck growth 7 . Herring, “Effect of Change of Scale on Sintering
He assumed viscous behavior as a model Phenomena,” Journal of Applied Physics, 1950,
vol. 21, pp. 301-303. The second in the same
for high temperature diffusional creep of year related diffusion and viscosity: C. Herring,
a solid. A sintering neck growth “Diffusional Viscosity of a Polycrystalline Solid,”
expression resulted by linking surface Journal of Applied Physics, 1950, vol. 21, pp.
energy induced stress to neck growth. 437-445. His third contribution came when he
took up surface energy as a motivation force for
sintering: C. Herring, “Surface Tension as a
This first neck growth model ignored the Motivation for Sintering,” The Physics of Powder
interparticle grain boundary. Even so, the Metallurgy, W. E. Kingston (ed.), McGraw-Hill,
concept initiated new thinking on New York, NY, 1951, pp. 143-178.

sintering and how the energy dissipated
by annihilated surface energy provided Experimental demonstration of the
work for densification. All of this took sintering stress, arising from surface
place by Newtonian viscous flow. energy, came in a 1951 paper by Fredrick
Curiously, Frenkel’s link of diffusion and Rhines and Howie Cannon 11 , later
viscosity was a rediscovery of the Stokes‐ refined by Greg and Rhines in 1973 12 .
Einstein equation and similar ideas from The strain rate associated with sintering
Sutherland and Smoluchowski dating densification was similar to that
from about 1905. calculated from surface energy, pore size,
and porosity data taken by quantitative
In 1949, Amos Shaler joined with John microscopy. To show the sintering rate
Wulff to apply the idea of surface energy was due to capillary forces arising from
to explain how surface curvature and surface energy, they measured the tensile
activation energy link during sintering load needed to halt sintering shrinkage.
8 . Subsequently, in 1951, Conyers These in situ zero creep experiments
Herring 1914‐2009 9 treated surface were an elegant demonstration of how
energy as the motivation for particle surface energy induces densification.
sintering. This was soon after his famous
scaling law model 10 , which helped Subsequently, particle rotation during
understand the role of particle size in on sintering offered evidence of nonuniform
sintering time.
85
surface energy, allowing identification of controversial. Calculations showed the
the surface energy cusps versus crystal neck curvature sufficient to induce high
misorientation 13 . temperature dislocation motion.

In building toward quantitative sintering D. Lynn Johnson
theory, two important parts of the
infrastructure were in place by the early Johnson focused on the sintering of alumina
starting with his PhD studies at the University of
1950s: Utah with Ivan Cutler. After his PhD, he joined
 atomic theory, which was largely Northwestern University, where he remained
accepted in the 1920s until retiring in 2003.
 surface energy driven mass flow,
During his career, he made several significant
which paralleled developments in advances in sintering. The first was in the early
creep and grain rotation that 1960s by applying dilatometry to identify the
emerged in the 1950s. sintering mechanism. Subsequently he
determined how to combine multiple
mechanisms to track sintering response. His
6.3. Atomic Motion  publications created multiple mechanism
sintering models; rejecting earlier thinking that
An important aspect of sintering theory sintering had to be just one mechanism.
comes from understanding atomic Johnson extended this multiple mechanism idea
motion. Today, atomic diffusion concepts to iron, copper, and silver. Subsequently he
permeate sintering models, but for many developed rapid sintering, where he densified
years plastic flow concepts were alumina in seconds using a microwave driven
plasma. He then developed a master sintering
dominant. This was just a few years after
curve idea to combine different heating cycles
conceptualization of dislocation flow in into a single response map: H. Su, D. L.
1934 14 . Diffusion emerged in sintering Johnson, “A Practical Approach to Sintering,”
theory in 1949 15 and was fully Ceramic Bulletin, 1997, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 72-76.
established by 1969 16 . In the interim,
In 2001 Johnson was named the Outstanding
the pendulum oscillated between the Educator by the American Ceramic Society
dislocation and diffusion views. having been designated a Fellow of that
Advocates for dominance by dislocation organization in 1974. In spite of his success,
motion persisted into the 1980s 17,18 . nowhere is there documentation on what his first
initial stood for, so everyone simply called him

Lynn Johnson. In retirement, he turned to
In retrospect, acceptance of a plastic flow questions on the history of Mormon (Latter Day
model slowed acceptance of a diffusion Saints) religious artifacts.

model. This is because the assumption
that only one mechanism could contribute In 1961, experiments by Ansell and Lenel
to sintering; diffusion precluded plastic demonstrated the sintering stress was
flow. Multiple and sequential mechanism sufficient to induce plastic flow during
concepts were missing up to 1964. Then heating 21 . A transient plastic flow
Johnson 19 and Seigle 20 created process finally arose in the 1970s from in
multiple mechanism diffusion ideas, but situ data by Schatt and Friedrich 22 and
ignored plastic flow. Morgan 23 . The former identified
dislocation climb and the latter identified
The conceptualization of surface energy dislocation slip during the heating portion
induced plastic flow during sintering was of sintering. Since dislocation populations

86
anneal out over time, transient plastic
flow from surface energy is an early stage
sintering mechanism. It took 40 years
from concept to experimental verification,
with much argument in between.
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844-1906)
Adolf Eugene Fick (1829-1901)
Boltzmann was born in Vienna, Austria, on 20
Fick was born on 3 September 1829, in Kassel, February 1844, and stayed most of his life in
Germany. He died 21 August 1901, in Austria. He obtained his doctorate from the
Blankenberge, Flanders. He was physiologist University of Vienna in 1866, studying under
who studied mathematics and physics, but Josef Stefan (Stefan-Boltzmann constant). He
shifted to medicine for his doctorate at Marburg worked on the kinetic theory of gases and
University in 1851. He worked at both the reached the status of professor of mathematical
University of Zurich and University of Wurzburg. physics at the University of Graz at the age of
25. He worked with Bunsen, Kirchhoff, and
Fick is known for two laws similar to other Helmholtz, and had Arrhenius and Nernst as
equations of state – Ohm’s law, Poisuille’s law, students. He moved several times, becoming
Darcy’s law, Fourier’s Law, and such. He dealt President of the University of Graz in 1887, then
with diffusion of a gas across a fluid membrane, moved to Munich in 1890, Vienna, Leipzig, and
such as how a soap bubble gives off internal Vienna again in 1901, as professor of theoretical
pressure or a helium balloon deflates. He physics at the University of Vienna, where he
measured the concentration of salt diffusing retired in 1902. Boltzmann favored atomic
between regions, publishing his observations theory, causing much dispute with noted
and laws in 1855. A century later, Kuczynski individuals such as Wilhelm Ostwald. Declining
invoked Fick’s first law to calculate mass flow health and depression led to his suicide near
during sintering. Trieste, Italy, on 20 September 1906. By then
several key individuals had joined him in
For Fick, the first law says the flux of flow is advocating atomic theory. He was recognized
proportional to the concentration gradient, or with many honors and awards.
effectively a steeply graded pipe will carry more
flow than a shallowly graded pipe. This showed The Stefan-Boltzmann constant is 5.67 10-8
that shorter diffusion distances contributed more W/(m2 K4) and the Boltzmann constant is 1.38
to sintering – today recognized by the fact that 10-23 J/K. When multiplied by Avogadro’s
smaller particles sinter faster. His second law number the product is the universal gas constant
can be derived from his first law, and it says at seen in the ideal gas law, PV = nRT. Here P is
any point the concentration change over time the pressure, V is the volume, n is the number of
depends on the second derivative of the moles, T is the temperature, and R at 8.31
concentration gradient. J/(mol K), which equals 1.38 10-23 times 6.02
1023. In statistical mechanics Boltzmann showed
the entropy S was S = k ln W, W being the
On the diffusion front, progress traces number of microstates, a relation cut on his
back some time. Adolph Fick developed tombstone. Boltzmann’s constant is employed in
early laws on mass flow, used extensively describing Arrhenius temperature dependencies
for diffusion, evaporation, creep, grain growth,
today in sintering models. By 1855 these
and sintering. Accordingly, Boltzmann’s imprint
were adopted to explain concentration is seen in all sintering models in the form of
changes with position and time in liquid entropy and thermal distribution of energy.
solutions. Over thirty years later 1888

Austrians Ludwig Boltzmann and Joseph
Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius
Stefan formulated a description of atomic
accepted these ideas and created a kinetic
motion that included a distribution of
model based on activation energy,
atomic energies within the ensemble.

87
winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in
1903. Equally noteworthy was Arrhenius’
discovery of the carbon dioxide
greenhouse gas concept widely accepted
today. In 1896, William Roberts‐Austen
applied thermally activated events to Svante August Arrhenius (1859-1927)
explain self‐diffusion in solid metals.
Likewise, in the early 1900s Langmuir Arrhenius was born 19 February 1859, in Vik,
worked on surface states of solids and Sweden, and died on 2 October 1927, in
Stockholm, Sweden. His academic progress took
effectively assumed atomic diffusion. him to Uppsala University and then the Swedish
Academy of Sciences where he finished his
Joseph Stefan (1835-1893) doctorate in 1884. The thesis on electrolyte
conductivity of electrolytes was not regarded
Joseph Stefan was born in the Slovenia part of highly, but extension of this thesis would result in
Austria on 24 March 1835, and died on 7 his Nobel Prize. He conjectured that even though
January 1893, in Vienna, Austria. His training in salt and water are not conductors, the
physics started in 1853, and finished with a dissociation of the salt in water to form ions gave
doctorate in 1857, all at the University of Vienna. the solution conductivity.
He taught physics there and served as director
of the Physics Institute from 1866. After graduation, Arrhenius traveled to meet
Ostwald, van’t Hoff, Boltzmann, and other stars.
Stefan held various scientific advisory positions In 1891, he became a lecturer at Stockholm
in Austria, published 80 scientific articles, and University. Initially a physicist, over time he
supervised several outstanding doctoral became a chemist, eventually defining physical
students. With Boltzmann this led to the famous chemistry. After 1905, he headed the Nobel
Stefan-Boltzmann Law and Stefan-Boltzmann Institute for Physical Chemistry.
Constant associated with thermal radiation. The
corresponding distribution of optical emission Arrhenius quantified temperature dependence in
energy with temperature is the basis for terms of an exponential relation involving
pyrometry. Using the flux from the sun gave him Boltzmann’s constant. Sintering models embed
a surface temperature estimate of 5430°C, which this sensitivity as an activation energy term.
was the first sensible value. Stefan’s work Arrhenius conjectured how carbon dioxide
underpinned ideas on atomic motion, atomic contributes to global warming. In 1901, he was
energy, and high temperatures behavior. admitted to the Swedish Academy of Sciences
and won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

These ideas intersected with emerging
concepts on atoms that begged for an William Chandler Roberts-Austen (1843-1902)
atomic diffusion model, but a realistic Roberts-Austen was born on 3 March 1843 in
mechanism remained elusive for several Kennington, England, and died on 22 November
years. 1902, in London. His birth last name was
Roberts, but changed to Roberts-Austen at the
The critical step in atomic motion, away request of an uncle as a condition for inheritance.
He entered the Royal School of Mines where he
from the atom exchange and ring stayed until 1865. In 1869, he went to the Royal
concepts for atomic diffusion, came from Mint, becoming Chemist, Professor of Metallurgy,
Hilliard Huntington’s 1941 doctoral thesis and Chemist and Assayer. He authored
at Princeton University under the Introduction to the Study of Metallurgy and
showed evidence of diffusion before atomic
supervision of Frederick Seitz. models. Austenite is used for face-centered cubic
iron. He became Fellow of the Royal Society
(1875), and was knighted in 1899.

88
Huntington accurately predicted, from temperatures resulted from creep, where
atomic theory, the activation energy for atoms move from stressed regions by
copper diffusion via vacancy migration. atom‐vacancy exchange. By 1955, Dorn
He also showed the ring and interstitial showed strain rates calculated from
mechanisms were not realistic 24,25 . diffusional creep matched experiments. In
1961, Coble contributed to both to creep
In 1946, vacancy diffusion was and sintering by showing diffusion could
experimentally demonstrated by Ernest couple to grain boundaries 28 . Wilson
Kirkendall 1914‐2005 in his famous and Shewmon further extended the idea
experiment with brass diffusion couples of multiple diffusion mechanisms by
26 . Even with this experimental determining grain orientation as a factor
demonstration, the idea of atomic in sintering 29 .
diffusion was generally resisted.

Frank Reginal Nunes Nabarro (1916-2006)

Ernest Kirkendall (1914-2005)
Nabarro was born in 7 March 1916, in the United
Kirkendall was born in East Jordan, Michigan, Kingdom, and studied at Oxford with degrees in
and grew up in Highland Park, Michigan. He physics and mathematics in 1937 and 1938.
attended Wayne State University, attaining a BS Then he studied at University of Bristol under
degree in 1934. His doctorate was from the Nevill Mott, and eventually obtained his MS from
University of Michigan in 1938. In 1941, he Oxford and doctorate from the University of
returned to Wayne State as an assistant Birmingham in 1953, delayed by WWII.
professor of chemical engineering, remaining in
that position until 1946. He moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, to
head the physics program at Witwatersrand
Kirkendall demonstrated diffusion occurred by University. His work focused on deformation,
vacancies. Unbalanced diffusion rates led to dislocation mechanics, and creep based on
vacancy accumulations in the form of pores. It dislocation flow. Within South Africa, he help
was a controversial idea when published: A. D. establish professional and educational programs.
Smigelskas, E. O. Kirkendall, “Zinc Diffusion in He died on 20 July 2006, in the United Kingdom.
Alpha Brass,” Transactions of the American
Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, His role in sintering theory came from the creep
Metals Technology, 1946, vol. XIII, Technical studies, leading in the 1950s to speculation on
Paper 2071. Later he remarked how difficult the the sintering mechanism being Nabarro-Herring
controversy was for him professionally, leading creep. Later became involved in research on
to his departure from teaching and research to hard materials fabricated by sintering.
taking a staff position with the AIME.
Nabarro’s received several awards, including
election to Fellow of the Royal Society, Institute
Larry Darken modified Fick’s treatment to of Materials Platinum Medal, Mehl Award from
include thermodynamic gradients with the American Institute of Metallurgical Engineers,
and election to membership in the US National
differing diffusion coefficients in binary Academy of Engineers. Witwatersrand University
solid solutions 27 . In the 1950s, Nabarro converted the doorknobs of its science building
and Herring conceived that changes in into dislocations symbols to honor his fame.

component shape at elevated
89
Thus, by the middle 1960s the early idea vacancy concentration and vacancy
of atomic diffusion had firm traction. diffusion were accepted, then important
Unfortunately, the apparent success of advances in sintering theory took place. A
diffusion models shifted the thinking combination of surface diffusion and
away from plastic flow models, which plastic flow models provide the best
dominated sintering theory just 20 years explanation of sintering during periods of
earlier. In retrospect, we recognize a heating, but once the dislocation
balance is required with diffusion structure relaxes, then isothermal
dominating at longer times and plastic sintering is primarily by diffusion, usually
flow possibly dominating during heating. grain boundary diffusion.

John E. Dorn (1909-1971) Paul G. Shewmon

Dorn was born 10 April 1909, in Chicago,
Illinois. He obtained his BS and MS degrees at
Northwestern University in 1931 and 1932,
respectively. He graduated with a doctorate in
physical chemistry from the University of
Minnesota in 1936.
After two years at Battelle Memorial Institute, in
Columbus, Ohio, Dorn joined the faculty at the
University of California – Berkeley, and
remained there for his career. At Berkeley, he
focused on physical metallurgy and was an
outstanding lecturer and researcher. Dorn was
famous for his landmark work in creating a
unified theory of creep deformation, which in
subsequent years included porosity. Two of his
students promoted creep ideas in sintering,
Oleg Sherby at Stanford showed it in the form
of superplastic sinter-forming of sintered
composites and Amiya Mukherjee at University
of California – Davis did the same for spark
sintering of small grain microstructures.
Dorn embedded material constants into a single
deformation model for creep. These ideas were
important to hot isostatic pressing, hot pressing,
and spark sintering. He authored 180 papers
and won awards from the American Society for
Metals, and American Society for Testing
Materials. He died on 24 September 1971.
It is curious to see how other conjectures Michael Ashby 30 combined finite time
persisted. Once the ideas of equilibrium steps, wherein for each time the mass
Shewmon won his BS degree in metallurgy in
1952 from University of Illinois and his PhD
came from Carnegie Institute of Technology in
Pittsburgh. After his PhD, he was employed by
Westinghouse Research Laboratory. In 1958, he
took a teaching position at Carnegie and
remained to 1967, after becoming professor. At
Argonne National Laboratory, he worked in
breeder reactor research and then became
director of the National Science Foundation
Division of Materials Research from 1973 to
1975. After that, he was appointed professor at
Ohio State. He authored Diffusion in Solids.
His work on sintering slanted toward diffusion
processes. Early diffusion models for neck
growth assumed a single transport mechanism.
This changed with the publication in 1966 of his
treatment of multiple mechanisms. Further, his
research disputed any substantial role from
volume diffusion. In his mind, grain boundary
diffusion dominated sintering shrinkage. This
promoted a substantial refocus on how diffusion
processes contribute to neck growth, shrinkage,
and the contribution shifts with temperature,
particle size, and degree of sintering.
Shewmon is in the National Academy of
Engineering and is a Fellow of the American
Society for Metals.

90
flow is calculated from all possible grain shapes seen in microscopes. Such
mechanisms, leading to adjustments of observations relied on improved
the sintering geometry. Accordingly, the instrumentation such as the reflected
new geometry is assessed to determine light microscopy developed by Henry
new gradients and new relative sintering Sorby in 1849. By the early 1900s,
contributions, leading to sintering maps, microscopy finally emerged as an
first for free sintering and subsequently established means for scientific study.
for pressure‐assisted sintering 31‐35 .

Thus, the third step in building sintering
theory was to link atomic structure,
sintering stress arising from surface
energy , and mass transport mechanisms.
This conceptualization allowed multiple Stephen Hales (1677-1761)
mechanisms, first starting in the 1960s
and reached implementation in computer Hales was born on 17 September 1677, in
simulations in the 1980s. Bekesbourne, Kent, England; some records say
his birth was 7 September. He entered
Cambridge, and was admitted to a fellowship in
6.4. Microstructure  1703, attaining a master of art. He took a
position in Teddington, Middlesex, England, in
1709, and remained there until his death on 4
Buried within the mathematics of January 1761. His divinity bachelor degree was
sintering theory are assumptions on the awarded in 1711, and doctorate in divinity came
microstructure and its evolution over from Oxford in 1734.
time. Although less recognized, still
As a clergyman, Hales performed research on
microstructure evolution is fundamental plant physiology and related topics. His
to current sintering theory. The topic may intersection with sintering comes from
be less elegant when compared to atomic observations on the structure of cellular matter,
theory, still understanding modeled by compressing peas into polyhedra.
Variations on his studies were repeated using
microstructure is a required part of the compressed lead shot, fat cells, and
infrastructure. polycrystalline metals to show similar grain
structures. Repeat of these experiments in
The first installment in quantifying France without referencing Hales gave the “peas
microstructure started with Stephen of Buffoon”. These studies identified the
tetrakaidecahedron with 14 sides and the
Hales. He was a parish priest with dodecahedron with 12 sides. About 200 years
interests that led to his book Vegetable later, Cyril Smith attacked polycrystalline
Statisks in 1727 36 . He describes aluminum with gallium to expose individual
experiments with peas compressed to full grains, giving similar shapes. Coble took up this
grain shape model in his theories of sintering.
density to give a coordination number
average of 12. An orderly array of Hales is credited with invention of the surgical
repeating “cells” produced a crystal. Later forceps and first determination of blood
the French version of his experiments led pressure. He was elected to the Royal Society in
to the Peas of Buffon. Other investigators 1717. He won the Copley medal and achieved
notice in guiding the establishing a colony in
started to etch rocks and observed Georgia. He died on 4 January 1761, in
crystals. By 1775, the nucleation and Teddington, England.
growth concept emerged to explain the

91
In 1864, Percy published Metallurgy ‐ diffusion through the lighter phase. Some
Iron and Steel, in which he treated solid grain coalescence is also taking place at
crystals. This work formally initiated the points of grain contact. This behavior is
field of microstructure observation. termed Ostwald ripening 37 . In tracing
Indeed, some of his early crystal the history of sintering theory, it is
conceptualizations are pretty much the noteworthy how Ostwald touched on key
same as given in modern textbooks. individuals and critical ideas required to
assemble quantitative sintering theory.

Henry Clifton Sorby (1826-1908)

Sorby was born in 10 May 1826, in Sheffield,

UK. He grew up in a tool maker’s home and
decided to attend college after private tutoring.
The private tutoring was necessary since few
science courses existed.

In 1847, his father died leaving an inheritance to

fund his scientific workshop. His financial Figure 6.3. A two‐phase liquid phase
independence enabled pursuit of projects that sintered microstructure where the grains
included microscope examination of geological
samples using both reflected and polarized light.
darker are undergoing coarsening by
This led to election as a Fellow of the Royal diffusion through the intermediate phase.
Society in 1857, at the age of 31. The
microscopic examination of minerals expanded Ostwald ripening describes the
to include meteorites, and subsequently progressive coarsening of flocculations
samples of iron and steel. He essentially
invented metallurgical microscopy and extended such as found in colloidal dispersions.
his observations to included failure analysis. His Practical demonstrations are possible
efforts created credibility for microscopic using oil‐in‐water emulsions. In that case
observation of metals, and his techniques the larger droplets grow at the expense of
became an embedded tool in sintering studies.
the smaller droplets, leading to a
Among his award, he won the Wollaston Medal progressive decrease in the number of
in 1869 and Gold Medal from the Royal Society droplets and increase in average droplet
in 1874. He was awarded an honorary doctorate size. Those changes correspond to surface
by the University of Cambridge. He died 9 energy reduction, akin to the common
March 1908, in Sheffield.
phrase “the rich get richer”. Ostwald
ripening applies to the cases where
In 1896, Wilhelm Ostwald described how diffusion solvation occurs in a phase
microstructure coarsening is possible in separating grains. It is not to be confused
solutions, and introduced the concept of with coalescence and sintering when
time dependent transport and coarsening. grains contact. In coalescence, grains
Figure 6.3 is an example of a sintered rotating into crystalline coincidence to
system where the grains darker phase eliminate grain boundaries.
are coarsening largely by dissolution and

92
Phase identification using reflected
optical microscopy is attributed to Albert Franz C. Sauerwald (1894-1966)
Sauveur. His efforts focused on steels and
identification of proper heat treatments Sauerwald published early conjectures about
sintering and theorized as to the required
via microscopy, a technique widely temperature. Raised in Germany and restricted to
adopted by 1910. The availability of East Germany after World War II, he became
microstructure observations fostered invisible. His concept was discredited but did
crystal conceptualization by Ewing and initiate looks to see if sintering started at 0.7 the
Rosenhain 38 at the University of absolute melting temperature, as he conjectured.
We recognize now that sinter bonding depends
Cambridge. They felt that solids consisted on the material, particle size, and other factors.
of crystalline grains. Additives changed His efforts to link with recrystallization did not
that structure by influencing the appreciate grain growth during sintering.
interfacial chemistry, with a change in the Sauerwald also is credited with first use of
protective atmospheres during hot pressing.
rate of grain growth, a common effect
seen in liquid phase sintering.
Coble then applied the same
Gustav Tammann was active as early tetrakaidecahedron grain shape idea to
sintered products emerged. He developed intermediate and final stage sintering
ideas relevant to sintering, especially models in 1961 1,45 . For the final stage
related to cemented carbides. He also of sintering, he assumed spherical pores
seeded concepts relevant to nucleation on the grain corners. For the intermediate
theory for Volmer and phase equilibria stage of sintering, when pores are
for Gibbs. One of his conjectures built connected to the external surface, he
from an idea from Franz Sauerwald, assumed the grain edges were tubular
where each material seemed to have a pores. In both cases the amount of
temperature for first sintering. Tammann porosity determined the pore size.
set 70 % of the absolute melting
temperature as the sintering onset
temperature, based on parallel ideas in
recrystallization. This recrystallization
idea, failed when different particle sizes
became available to show smaller
particles sintered at lower temperatures.

In the late 1940s, Cyril Stanley Smith
identified the three‐dimensional grain
structure for metals, and presented a
quantitative sense of the grain shape and
size distribution in polycrystalline solids
39 . An example of a typical grain shape
after extraction is shown in Figure 6.4.
This work, using full‐density aluminum, Figure 6.4. An outline sketch of an
confirmed earlier grain shape models and aluminum grain as extracted in studies on
later observations 40‐44 , showing the grain shape in polycrystalline metals.
14‐sided tetrakaidecahedron as a
reasonable grain shape model.
93
In 1969, Aboav and Langdon published a
statistically significant quantitative
analysis of the grain shape distribution
and grain size distribution for sintered
magnesia 46 . This was coupled to
examination of porous and hot pressed E. H. Wallodi Weibull (1887-1979)
variants 47,48 using 10,000 grains.
Weibull was born 18 June 1887, in Sweden, to a
The sintered magnesia grain size data fit a family of scientists and engineers. He died in
France on 12 October 1979. He served in the
distribution model attributed to Weibull Swedish Coast Guard from 1904, reaching
49,50 . The data and model are plotted in Captain in 1916, and Major in 1940. In 1924, he
Figure 6.5 as the cumulative grain size graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology
distribution. Such universal sintered and also served as a professor. His doctorate
was from University of Uppsala in 1932. In 1941,
microstructure behavior is termed self‐ he became a professor in physics at the Royal
similar. A self‐similar distribution implies Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
only one scaling factor is required, in this
case the median grain size. The concept His distribution was published in 1939, where for
for the self‐similar grain size and shape grain size the Weibull distribution is as follows:
distributions arose from these data 51 . 1 2
Thus, a Weibull distribution fit requires
where F(G) is the cumulative fraction of grains of
determination of only the median grain size G or smaller, G50 is the median grain size,
size to plot any sintered material’s grain and M is the Weibull modulus, which is usually 2
size distribution. for two-dimensional measures and 3 for three-
dimensional size measures. He published on the
strength of materials, fracture conditions, and
fatigue. From this arose the prediction of life
expectancy for engineering materials, aircraft,
ships, and people. He was recognized by several
organizations, including the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers with a Gold Medal in a
ceremony with Neil Armstrong and by King Carl
XVI Gustave of Sweden.


Refinements followed for grain shape
model with inclusion of a dihedral angle
for a second phase, came in 1975 from
Beere 52 and a year later from Wray
53 . These are applicable to liquid phase
sintered microstructures. Figure 6.6 is a
Figure 6.5. The cumulative fraction of
map of grain corner shape versus
grains smaller than the normalized size
dihedral angle and amount of second
measured as the ratio to the median
phase solid, liquid, or pore . The
grain size . Besides the data of Aboav and
resulting map for equilibrium solid grains
Langdon for magnesia, this plot also
versus the dihedral angle enables
includes data for sintered tungsten,
assessment of possible cell arrangements
alumina, and zirconia. The fit is based on
54 , where grain size and grain shape are
a Weibull distribution.
correlated factors.

94


Figure 6.6. Six configurations for a liquid
or solid, or pore phase located at the
grain junction. Here showing the content
versus the dihedral angle for the grain Figure 6.7. Data for iron sintering,
boundary intersection with the liquid. showing the pore to grain size ratio
versus porosity during densification.
From the 1920s to 1990s, the grain
details in sintered materials emerged, Other studies went on to quantify a
with quantified links to plant cells and variety of microstructure‐property links,
other structures. Microstructure changes especially in the cemented carbides 56‐
during sintering identified the pathway 67 . Significant in these studies were
for the evolution. Subsequently, self‐ contributions from Exner and Gurland,
similar distributions emerged for grain with relations between properties such as
size and other features. hardness or toughness and
microstructure features such as grain size
Much experimental data arose to confirm or grain separation. One of the valuable
the microstructure models 46‐48,51 . ideas arose based on percolation. A
For example, careful early sintering percolated grain network is continuous,
experiments came from Watanabe and meaning a network of contacting grains
Masuda 55 on carbonyl iron. Their study provides exists for load transfer within
provides a complete mapping of the the microstructure.
sintering trajectory. Their data for the
pore size relation to porosity and grain Although the commercial importance of
size is shown by the plot in Figure 6.7. cemented carbides gave dominance to
These data correspond to a broad range their analysis, similar concepts were
of sintering times up to nearly 100 hours applied to other sintered materials. The
at 850°C. As is evident, the sintered findings came in many forms, where
density increased from 85 to 99 % during Figure 6.8 is an illustrative example,
the study. showing variation in fracture toughness
of sintered silicon nitride as related to the
square root of the grain size.

95

Joseph Gurland (1923-2003)
Gurland was born in Germany on 26 January
1923, but left with his mother due the Nazi
upheaval. He died on 23 December 2003. He
studied at New York University for both his BS
and MS degrees and then joined Battelle
Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, where he
worked on high purity titanium.
He went to Massachusetts Institute of
Technology for his PhD under John Norton to
study cemented carbides. This led to a position
at Firth Sterling in Pittsburgh, where he became
head of the basic research laboratory. In 1955,
he moved to Brown University, where he
remained until his retirement in 1988.
demonstrated as much as a 50% variation
in elastic modulus at any given density,
depending on the processing details. His
data are reproduced in Figure 6.9 as a
scatter plot of elastic modulus for
sintered steels versus the sintered density
as a percentage of theoretical. At
intermediate densities, such as 75% of
theoretical, the measured elastic modulus
varies from about 55 to 110 GPa.
Nominally, the curve shows a best fit to
the data, but still the variation due to
differences in purity, neck size, pore
shape, grain size, and other factors is
large.

In dealing with sintered cemented carbides,

Gurland did much to link the mechanical
properties, deformation, and microstructure,
while introducing percolation theory. His
research delved into the phase relations,
processing parameters, and property linkages to
quantitative microstructure parameters such as
contiguity. Of particular difficulty was explaining
fracture toughness changes in sintered WC-Co
composites, leading to extension of Hall-Petch
concepts to sintered composites. His
collaborations were wide ranging, and included
work with Hans Eckert Exner, Ron Armstrong,
and Norman Petch. He was involved in several
professional organizations and was fellow of the Figure 6.8. Fracture toughness of sintered
American Society for Metals, and organized silicon nitride versus square root of the
international conferences on hard materials. grain size.


Similar results emerged to provide broad Microstructure relations and
quantitative property‐microstructure understanding how microstructure
models. However, often accuracy is evolves in sintering is the fourth
sacrificed for simplicity. For example, ingredient required to create a
Skorohod and colleagues 68 generalized quantitative sintering theory. Thus the
links between elastic properties and legs supporting the theoretical platform
density during sintering. The advantage is for sintering are ‐
an easily implemented relation useful for  atomic theory
computer simulation of sintering  surface energy
deformation. Yet Haynes 65,69 already  atomic motion

96
  quantitative microstructure in the early 1900s, especially as
conceptualizations, including the outgrowths from ferrous metallurgy.
spatial relations, distribution
functions, and controlling features 6.5.1. Temperature  
as matured by the 1980s.
Temperature measurement is an
important part of the sintering
infrastructure 70 . The Fahrenheit
temperature scale, introduced in 1724,
came from Daniel Fahrenheit 1686‐
1736 . This scale operated between the
coldest and hottest day he observed over
a year, divided into 100 units. The more
useful Centigrade scale arose by dividing
the melting and boiling temperature of
water into 100 degrees. The current
universal standard is the Celsius
temperature scale named after Anders
Celsius 1701‐1744 . The idea of absolute
zero temperature emerged in 1848 from
William Thompson, latter known as Lord
Kelvin. At this point, quantification of
temperature was possible, but acceptance
of a standard temperature scale took until
1954.

First means to measure high
temperatures associated with sintering
Figure 6.9. Scatter plot reproduced from arose in the middle 1800s. The gas
date by Haynes, showing density effect on thermometer for high temperature
elastic modulus for sintered steel. measurement came about in 1828 and
entered broad use in the 1870s. During
6.5. Measurement Tools  this time, Thomas Johann Seebeck
observed the thermoelectric effect at the
The final underpinning to sintering junction of dissimilar metals. This was the
theory comes from the development of precursor to the thermocouple. In 1829,
quantitative measurement tools. The Leopoldo Nobili and Macedonio Melloni
tools had to be reliable and easily used. 1798‐1854 combined thermocouples
Qualitative property descriptions were with galvanometers to measure voltage
helpful, but management and versus temperature. The thermocouple
optimization of sintering cycles required replaced previous subjective terms such
quantitative data. The ability to measure as “white hot” or “dull red”. Although the
properties and property changes with thermocouple is widely applied today, it
variations in the sintering cycle emerged was not widely available until the latter
portion of the 1800s.

97
 hydrogen provided heat. Retorts in
furnaces arose to avoid reactions between
the heat source and sintering material.

(Lord Kelvin) William Thomson (1824-1907)

Thomson was an Irish physicist born in Belfast

on 26 June 1824. His father was a professor of
mathematics at Glasgow University, leading to
an early and intense education in mathematics. Thomas Johann Seebeck (1770-1831)
At age 16, he published his first paper.
Seebeck was born on 9 April 1770, in what is
From 1841 to 1845, he attended Cambridge today Tallinn, Estonia, although his father was
University. After an assignment in Paris, he initially a German citizen. Accordingly, Seebeck
returned to Glasgow in 1846 as a professor, a studied in Berlin and received a medical degree
post he retained for 53 years to 1899. He was in 1802, in Gottingen. His inheritance allowed
involved in mathematics, heat flow, him to become a physics-based inventor.
thermodynamics, and in 1848 developed the
temperature scale that carries his name. The He lived in Berlin and Nuremburg. In December
Kelvin Equation relates capillary pressure to 1820, he announced discovery of magnetic
surface curvature and is fundamental to deflection from current flow in dissimilar metals in
explaining sintering and why particles pull a temperature gradient. This was only months
together during sintering. His model for viscous- after Oersted observed a magnetic effect from
elastic response is also part of sintering theory. current flow. This discovery of the thermoelectric
Other contributions include formulation of the effect soon allowed for quantification of
second law of thermodynamics, electrical temperature and the eventual control of sintering
transmission and telegraphy, the latter probably cycles. The modern thermocouple relies on a
influenced by Michael Faraday and the former by cold and hot junction using two wires. Slight
James Joule. shifts in the quantum state of the conduction
electrons at the junction change voltage with
Tomson was knighted Lord Kelvin in 1892 for his temperature difference. When the cold junction is
contributions to Atlantic Ocean telegraphic cable standardized, the voltage is proportional to the
design. He won several medals and prizes, hot temperature. Seebeck’s ideas led an Italian
including the Copley Medal and Royal Medal. He physics team of Leopoldo Nobili and Macendonio
died 17 December 1907, in Largs, United Melloni to develop a thermoelectric battery for
Kingdom. He claimed you really do not temperature measurement. Seebeck died 10
understand something unless you can quantify it. December 1831, in Berlin, Germany.


6.5.2. Furnaces   Other than combustion of fossil fuel, most
of the heating options relied on spark or
The history of early furnace construction induction heating. Lenel termed direct
is lost, but wood and charcoal fires were current heating spark sintering. It is
undoubtedly the starting point. appropriate for consolidation of one
Experiments in the 1700s relied on compact at a time, as is the case with
concentrated solar heating, but the low induction heating. Furnaces that burn
and variable peak temperatures and fuels, such as methane, are limited in peak
dependence on weather probably temperature. For lower temperatures, the
prevented widespread use. As peak temperature from burning fuel are
combustible gases became common, not a concern. Indeed, by the early 1900s
flames from methane, acetylene, and production furnaces for sintering were

98
borrowing design ideas from brazing, the pressure‐assisted technique was
heat treating, and annealing furnaces. named spark plasma sintering, but there
is no evidence of a plasma 72,73 .
Leopoldo Nobili
Coolidge used spark sintering to
Nobili was born in Toscana, Italy, in 1784, and consolidate tungsten powder ingots for
died in Florence, Italy, in 1835. He attended the
Modena Military Academy , serving as an
subsequent wire drawing into lamp bulb
artillery officer in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. filaments. This arose out of necessity,
since high temperature furnaces were
After military service, he devoted his efforts to rare in 1910. By 1955, Lenel reports
electrical behavior. He followed behind Seebeck consolidation of titanium, steel, and
to create creating instrumentation for
temperature measurement. There was no ability zirconium using “resistance sintering
to specify temperature until both the under pressure” 74 . Subsequently, he
thermodynamic scale and measurement device names the technique spark sintering 75 .
were established. In 1829, Nobili’s collaboration One commercial result from these early
with Macedomio Melloni (1798-1854) gave the
“termomultiplier” as a combination of thermopile
experiments is the Gleeble device; a
and galvanometer, a precursor to the common tool in welding research.
thermocouple. He became professor at the
Regal Museum of Physics and Natural History in In more recent times, Munir 76
Florence. His electric thermometer provided a performed a broad range of experiments
means to quantify temperature, thereby enabling
repeated heating cycles in sintering. with field assisted sintering, training
many of the current actors, including the
author. He preferred to call the approach
For metal sintering, the usual option was field assisted sintering.
to separate the components from the
combustion source using a muffle 71 . Direct discharge electric heating with or
The upper temperature limit depended without pressure is an option for
on the fuel, but 1200°C operation often consolidation of a single ingot or compact.
resulted in a short life to the muffle and The largest use is in consolidation of
conveyor mechanism. metal‐bonded diamond tools, with
thousands of installed units. To improve
For high temperatures, the alternative productivity for high temperature
was to sinter one component at a time via sintering, an option is to use refractory
direct electric discharge. Edward Acheson metal Mo, Ta, W wound furnaces with
used an electric arc approach to combine protective atmospheres. These designs
silica and coke to form silicon carbide. migrated the option of vacuum furnaces
Subsequently, in 1896, Henri Moissan with graphite heating elements.
developed his own version of the electric
furnace. He directly discharged electricity Lower temperature sintering, at one
through a powder bed to generate a wide atmosphere pressure, typically relies on a
variety of novel carbides, borides, muffle or retort. One option is to heat
nitrides, and silicides, including tungsten externally with the retort filled using
carbide. Moissan’s work resulted in the partially combusted natural gas. This
1906 Nobel Prize for what is the provides a cheap protective atmosphere,
precursor to spark sintering and field known as exothermic or endothermic,
assisted sintering. About 80 years later depending on the ratio of gas to air. Since
99
natural gas varies in molecular species, existed back in the 1200s. In 1654, Otto
such atmospheres prove variable in von Guericke designed a piston vacuum
quality. Thus, options arose based on pump. The combination of high vacuum
dissociated ammonia. This mixture of and high sintering temperature required
hydrogen and nitrogen became a development of the diffusion vacuum
precursor to today’s synthetic nitrogen‐ pump. Wolfgang Gaeded invented the
hydrogen blends with just 5% hydrogen. mercury diffusion pump in 1915. The
silicone oil diffusion pump, with reduced
Thus, sintering furnace designs arose health hazard, emerged from the work of
with retort or muffle partitions to Cecil Burch in 1928. Finally, Richard Brew
separate the heat source from the designed and produced high temperature
atmosphere and components, electric or diffusion pumped vacuum furnaces in
combustion heat sources, and various 1946. Now the heating elements were
protective atmospheres. Productivity inside the chamber, usually consisting of a
took a huge leap with the advent of cold wall. His design was widely adopted
continuous furnaces. Figure 6.10 is an for batch vacuum sintering furnaces.
example of the continuous conveyor
process. Such devices are suited to Using electric power and refractory metal
sintering automotive, consumer, heating elements later came ceramic
electronic, and lawn‐garden devices. heating elements enabled high sintering
Hydrogen was a favorite atmosphere, but temperatures as required for sintering
vacuum sintering progressively is nuclear, aerospace, and refractory
displacing hydrogen sintering 77 . materials. Figure 6.11 is a picture of a
typical vacuum furnace used for sintering
in the 1200 to 1500°C range. The heating
elements are refractory metal. Vacuum
sintering furnaces are also the basis for
vacuum hot presses. In many cases the
heating elements and internal insulation
are based on graphite.

Figure 6.10. Steel components on a
continuous conveyor belt as they enter
the muffle of a sintering furnace. Figure 6.11. Batch vacuum sintering
furnace with internal refractory metal
Vacuum sintering furnaces emerged in heating elements and outside cold jacket
the late 1940s. Vacuum suction pumps useful for reaching high temperatures.

100
Thus, first we needed a temperature
scale, then means to easily measure Although now taken for granted, hardness
temperature, and next a means to testing was a first means to quantify
generate high temperatures with material properties. It was followed by
controlled atmospheres. Other than spark tensile, compression, bending, impact,
sintering, access to the high fracture, fatigue, and similar tests. Since
temperatures, as needed to sinter the Brinell test was not useful on hard
refractory materials, only emerged in the materials, new scales emerged. Rockwell
1940s. Prior to that, electric discharge hardness Hugh M. Rockwell and Stanley
heating was the common way to P. Rockwell and Vickers microhardness
circumvent furnace temperature limits. G. E. Sandland 1922 and Alexis Hall
1924 followed, in 1915 and 1924,
6.5.3. Property Quantification  respectively. Hot hardness testing
emerged starting in 1930 and was
Another important tool for sintering established by the 1950s 78,79 . Today,
studies was the development of hardness only density and shrinkage are more
testing. Geologist Friedrich Mohs widely employed as a means to track the
proposed a scratch test in 1812, useful for progression of sintering.
minerals, but not useful for steels. Johan
August Brinell established the first Rockwell Brothers
standardized hardness test.
Stanley and Hugh Rockwell developed hardness
tests capable of measuring hard and soft
Johan August Brinell (1849-1925) materials, such as heat treated steels and
cemented carbides. The initial idea of an
Brinell was a Swedish mechanical engineer born indentation depth came from Paul Ludwik in
on 21 November 1849, in Bringetofta. He 1908. The Brinell test arose in Sweden while the
invented a means to quantify hardness in what is Rockwell test arose in the USA. The benefit of
known as the Brinell harness test. His work with the latter test is the smaller indent, faster
the Swedish iron trade association led to means measurement, and use on harder materials. The
for metal specification and proper heat treatment. Rockwell test is a differential depth test based on
He used a 10 mm diameter ball pushed at 3000 penetration of a prescribed indenter, measuring
kg load into the surface. The Brinell Hardness the progressive depth of indentation between a
Number (BHN) comes from the indentation size, first lower load and a second higher load.
with lower values and larger indents reflecting
softer metals. For hard materials, the Brinell test Stanley P. Rockwell was born in 1886 and died
proved unable to indent so other harder in 1940, and Hugh M. Rockwell was born in 1890
indenter’s and tests emerged. Thus, the and died in 1957, they were not directly related.
Rockwell team invented multiple hardness tests They grew up in Connecticut and applied for a
to extend the hardness range. The Vickers test patent on 15 July 1914, for examining the
uses a microscope in what is called a hardness of steel bearing races after heat
microhardness test. Conversion charts help to treatment. The patent issued (1,294,171) on 11
approximate the equivalent values for the various February 1919. Stanley Rockwell made
scales. improvements and subsequently worked in
Connecticut with Charles Wilson to develop
Hardness tests provide a simple means to map standardized hardness testing machines from
density gradients and degree of sintering. 1923.
Brinell’s work led to election to the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal
Swedish Academy of Engineering. He died on 17 In parallel, various mechanical property
November 1925, in Stockholm, Sweden.
tests emerged from the 1870s on,

101
including tensile, impact, and fatigue absorption concept 81 . This is one of the
tests. Property measurement matured for most heavily cited papers in science. Note
quantifying the impact of different Edward Teller the T in BET , went on to
sintering cycles in the early 1900s. have profound impact.

Problems remained since the sintering
stress calculated from surface energy was
small, often in the 0.1 to 10 MPa range,
depending on particle size. On the other
hand, after sintering the strength can
exceed 1000 MPa. This enormous Edward Teller (1908-2003)
strength conceptually made densification
impossible. In situ strength tests during Teller was one of the most influential men of the
sintering emerged in 1998, showing the 20th century. He was born in Budapest, Hungary
on 15 January 1908, and died at 95 in Stanford,
dramatic fall in strength on reaching the California, on 9 September 2003. He was
sintering temperature 80 . Example educated in Germany at Karlsruhe and Leipzig
results in Figure 6.12 show the gain then and studied under Heisenberg along with Fritz
loss of strength as progressively higher Lenel. Teller also worked with Gamow, Fermi,
Bohr, Compton, Oppenheimer, Bethe,
temperatures are reached. This bronze Lawrence, Einstein, and such – many were
powder reached a sintered strength of Noble Prize winners.
680 MPa after cooling from 830°C, but in
situ strength dropped to reach a level Teller came to the USA in the migration out of
comparable to the sintering stress. Europe to escape Nazi Germany. His
contributions to sintering came from co-
discovery of the BET technique while at George
Washington University. It relied on gas
absorption to measure surface area. Now
automated, that approach gives the degree of
sintering from the surface area loss.

Teller went on to fame in the USA nuclear

program. He joined Oppenheimer at Los Alamos
in the Manhattan Project and realized the atomic
fission reaction role in thermonuclear fusion
reactions. He served as director of Los Alamos
for many years. He then advocated for the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
named after the Berkeley professor who
invented the cyclotron. His advice for a strong
arsenal reached significance when Ronald
Figure 6.12. The in situ strength during Reagan became president and took up the
Teller advocated Strategic Defense Initiative.
heating for 26 µm bronze powder,
showing significant thermal weakening I remember him saying that if you cannot explain
near the sintering temperature. your idea in five minutes, then it is not a good
idea. In a sense, this advice has guided me in
writing, teaching, and selling research ideas.
6.5.4. Surface Area 

Surface area as a characterization tool Alternatives were gas permeation, for
emerged in 1938 based on the BET gas example used in studies by Coble on

102
alumina, or quantitative microscopy, for pressure‐assisted sintering options arose,
example used by DeHoff and others for called hot isostatic pressing HIP , rapid
copper 82,83 . The lack of sensitivity in omnidirectional compaction ROC , quick
gas permeation resulted in BET or hot isostatic pressing Q‐HIP , and sinter‐
quantitative microscopy as the common HIP 98,99 . Today these pressure‐
means to measure surface area, but assisted sintering options are a mainstay
permeability is not useful for measuring for the production of cutting tools,
closed pores 84 . abrasive nozzles, jet engine components,
medical implants, and other high
6.5.5. Pressure Generation  performance components. The sinter‐HIP
approach combines initial vacuum
As sintered hard materials emerged, sintering with pressurization late in the
unrelated work by Percy Bridgman at cycle to collapse residual pores. The
Harvard University had profound impact. largest use for sinter‐HIP is in
His research focused on high‐pressure densification of cemented carbides 100 .
physics and the synthesis of novel
materials. This resulted in a Nobel Prize 6.5.6. Atmosphere Control 
in 1946. Soon after this commercial
diamond and cubic boron nitride powders The standard practice in sintering is to
went into production, starting in 1955 establish an atmosphere in the furnace
85,86 . By 1980, diamond was liquid and then to heat throughout the cycle in
phase sintered to full density using high that same atmosphere. However,
pressures for stabilization at empirical discovery finds it is more
temperatures over 1500°C 87 . successful to change the atmosphere at
different temperatures.
A lower pressure gas‐based furnace
technique was invented in 1955, termed Experiments in 1944 by Norton and
hot isostatic pressing HIP . It was Marshall 101 determined what gases
initially applied to pressure bonding evolved at different temperatures during
zirconium alloy cladding onto nuclear fuel the heating cycle. They applied the idea to
pellets. During the 1960s, HIP made several materials. In most cases, the
significant inroads in pressure‐assisted vapor species were nitrogen, carbon
sintering of titanium, nickel superalloys, monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Changes in
tool steels, and other materials. Many of the processing atmosphere provide some
these efforts reached commercial status control over the reactions. For example,
in the 1970s as prealloyed powders properties depend on the residual oxygen
became available. Early work focused on and carbon level, so atmosphere selection
nickel‐base superalloys 88 and stainless are manipulated to adjust the final levels.
steels 89 , followed by aluminum alloys
90 , steels 91 , and tool steels 92,93 . Significant insight arose with analytical
tools that sample the atmosphere during
The removal of residual porosity provides heating 102,103 . From this, on‐line
high properties, so many of the efforts control concepts arose, where
focused on property gains attributed to temperature change decisions relied on
reaching full density 94‐97 . Several the furnace atmosphere condition.

103

Noteworthy property gains came from Subsequently, atmosphere manipulations
changing the water content dew point as arose as a means to induce functional
a measure of moisture with temperature. gradients in the sintered body. For
In tungsten heavy alloys, a slight partial example, Fang 105 established novel
pressure of moisture in the hydrogen cemented carbide properties by inducing
sintering atmosphere suppresses cobalt migration away from the
blistering. For example, Bose 104 component exterior via atmosphere
determined solid‐state diffusion of changes. The product has a hard surface
oxygen that formed trapped water vapor and tough core. The ability to tailor
oxygen reacting with hydrogen is properties by atmosphere changes during
reversed by offsetting increases in the sintering is a means to enhance sintered
partial pressure of water in the hydrogen properties.
atmosphere.

Zhigang Zak Fang

Animesh Bose
Bose grew up in India and obtained his PhD
from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur. He moved to the USA in 1985 to
work on sintered intermetallics and tungsten
alloys with Randall German. Bose mastered
powder injection molding and became head of
R&D for Parmatech, an early firm in metal and
ceramic injection molding. Subsequent positions
included president of Materials Processing, a
firm involved in sintered tungsten carbides. He is
currently involved in additive manufacturing
where his activities focus on new systems.
He is a patient researcher that relies on
systematic experimentation. Much of his effort is
on high temperature materials, such as
intermetallic matrix composites and cemented
carbides. Bose is the author of a book entitled
Advances in Particulate Materials, and co-author
of Hot Consolidation of Powders and
Particulates, and Injection Molding of Metals and
Ceramics. He co-edited of Reviews in Powder
Metallurgy and PM Science and Technology
Briefs. His honors include the ASM Visiting
Lecturer Award joint with the Indian Institute of
Metals, Fellow of the American Powder
Metallurgy Institute, and Fellow of ASM
International.
Fang is professor of metallurgical engineering at
the University of Utah. He joined that faculty in
2002, after prior experience at Smith
International and Rogers Tool Works. Both
industrial positions involved sintered hard
materials (cemented carbides, polycrystalline
diamond) for oil well drilling applications.
Born in China, he attended the University of
Science and Technology in Beijing for both his
BS and MS degrees with graduation in 1984. He
was a research fellow at the Delft University of
Technology in The Netherlands during 1987. His
PhD degree came from the University of
Alabama at Birmingham in 1991, under the
guidance of Burton Patterson. That thesis
focused on the convergence of the grain size
distribution to a self-similar distribution
independent of the starting particle size
distribution. He authored 120 publications and 30
patents. One patent covers the means to tailor
hardness and toughness gradients via
atmosphere manipulation during sintering. This
resulted in commercialization via a start-up
company, Heavystone. Other efforts focus on the
sintering of titanium in hydrogen using titanium
hydride. Fang serves as editor for the
International Journal of Refractory Metals and
Hard Materials.

104
 shrinkage and distortion , properties,
6.5.7. Newer Tools  defects, and cost.

A wide variety of new tools recently As knowledge advanced beyond neck size
emerged to assist in the study of evolution during sintering, the sintering
sintering. Although discovered over measures matured to include density,
several years, still these advances help shrinkage, surface area, pore size, and
better understand sintering: grain size. Later, property measurements
molecular dynamic simulations 106 and their evolution during sintering
grain imaging during heating 107 emerged. These tests included hardness,
microwave heating 108 elastic modulus, strength, ductility,
in situ component imaging 109 toughness, and conductivity thermal and
computer tomography 110 electrical .
hot stage electron microscopy 111
in situ strength testing 112
gas discharge plasma heating 113
plasma heating 114
in situ eddy current testing 115
in situ conductivity testing 116
photonic flash sintering 117 . Jose Manuel Torralba (Castello)

Each of these tools adds to establishing a Torralba was born in Melilla, Spain, in 1959. He
obtained two PhDs, one from the Technical
robust sintering theory. The success of University of Madrid, and the second from the
sintering theory is measured by its ability School of Engineering of the Spanish Army,
to predict size, shape, microstructure, and Escuela Politecnica Superior de Ejercito –
cost. A good example of relevant research ESPE. The first dealt with powder metallurgy and
second dealt with ceramics.
comes from the studies by Jose Torralba
118‐120 . He examines how various His academic appointment is with Universidad
parameters influence sintered Carlos III de Madrid, where he served in several
dimensions for high performance tool roles, including professor and vice rector.
steels and other high value systems. Torralba also served with the IMDEA as deputy
director responsible for building a regional
materials research program. Subsequently he
Early sintering theory focused on became General Director of Universities and
predicting neck size and this was of little Research for the Madrid Regional Board of
merit from a commercial standpoint. For Education, serving as technical monitor for the
government investment in research and
densification, sintering concepts emerged development. He is the leading European
that paralleled creep models, often with a academic researcher in applied sintering. He has
bias toward dislocation concepts. By the published more than 400 articles and 8 patents.
1950s these viewpoints coalesced and
much of the conceptualization tracked He has an honorary doctorate from Universidad
de Craiova, runs the European Powder
contemporary creep concepts 121 . The Metallurgy Association Summer School, and co-
prediction of neck growth rates had to organized the 1998 World Congress of Powder
advance to relevant measures, such as Metallurgy. He is Fellow of the American Powder
means to predict the component size Metallurgy Institute.

105
Economic analysis of the sintering cost is American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and
a relatively a late contribution 122‐125 . Petroleum Engineers, 1952, vol. 187, pp. 755‐765.

The analysis says that sintering cost 3 Lord Rayleigh, “On the Capillary Phenomena of
depends on the furnace type and age Jets,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London,
depreciation , furnace size and loading, 1879, vol. 29, pp. 71‐97.
time‐temperature path, but generally
ranges from $0.50 to $7.00 per kg. In high 4 A. Einstein, Investigations on the Theory of the
Brownian Movement, Dover, New York, NY, 1956.
volume sintering of ferrous automotive
components the cost is near this lower 5 P. E. Wretblad, J. Wulff, “Sintering,” Powder
range. More effort needs to be placed on Metallurgy, J. Wulff ed. , American Society for
monitoring and understanding this aspect Metals, Cleveland, OH, 1942, pp. 36‐59.
of sintering to improve accuracy and help
6 M. M. Ristic, “Sintering ‐ Past and Present On
design cost‐effective and impactful the 40th Anniversary of the Belgrade School of
sintering cycles. Sintering ,” Science of Sintering, 2001, vol. 33, pp.
143‐147.
Initial success in sintering came from
empirical observations, but subsequently 7 J. Frenkel, “Viscous Flow of Crystalline Bodies
under the Action of Surface Tension,” Journal of
computational tools allowed for Physics, 1945, vol. 9, pp. 385‐391.
predictions of component size and shape.
Since many of the sintering attributes 8 A. J. Shaler, J. Wulff, “On the Rate of Sintering of
track similar pathways, property Metal Powders,” Physical Review, 1948, vol. 73, p.
predictions are possible simply based on 926.

the degree of sintering 95 . 9 C. Herring, “Surface Tension as a Motivation
for Sintering,” The Physics of Powder Metallurgy,
As the infrastructure matured, W. E. Kingston ed. , McGraw‐Hill, New York, NY,
quantitative evaluation of sintered 1951, pp. 143‐178.
properties and closed‐loop control of
10 C. Herring, “Effect of Change of Scale on
process parameters became possible. In Sintering Phenomena,” Journal of Applied Physics,
turn, models evolved to link processing 1950, vol. 21, pp. 301‐303.
parameters and composition to
microstructure, properties, and finally 11 F. N. Rhines, H. S. Cannon, “Rate of Sintering
component production cost. In other of Copper under a Dead Load,” Transactions of the
Metallurgical Society of the American Institute of
words, the infrastructure for sintering Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers,
and sintering theory arrived far behind 1951, vol. 191, pp. 529‐530.
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12 R. A. Gregg, F. N. Rhines, “Surface Tension and
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Finite element analysis of compacted green body density as a fraction of theoretical density
for a solid bushing geometry. Shown are the density contours versus position. During
sintering the lower density regions shrink more so the sintered component warps.
Understanding green body density gradients is critical to computer predictions of final size
and shape after sintering.

112
7. Pulling Things Together  final size would be out of the typical
tolerance range. Such simulations help

guide process parameter evaluation, but
This summary makes a few comments on
fail to meet production requirements 2 .
the relative applicability of sintering

models. Because of the number of
One culprit is the variation in component
mechanisms, stages, powder types,
mass or green density, resulting in
shaping conditions, green body
sintered dimension scatter. Simulations
conditions, solid‐liquid‐reaction events,
assume uniform green density.
and time‐temperature‐atmosphere
Consequently, the output from the
combinations, the problem is complex. It
computer is unable to anticipate the
should be no surprise that sintering
corresponding dimensional variation in
theory has turned to computer
the sintered size. The variability is caused
simulations to tak114e on this
by the forming steps prior to sintering;
complexity.
sintering is the messenger about earlier

issues.
  7.1. Sintering Simulations 
Computer simulations of sintering are
Computer simulations are a means to sensitive to many parameters 3 . Small
handle the inherent complexity of errors in the material properties,
sintering, helping evaluate different “what especially activation energies, cause large
if” scenarios. Although effective in this variations in the predicted behavior.
role, existing simulations have difficulty Accurate simulations require detailed
making predictions sufficiently accurate knowledge on several fronts, divided into
for tasks such as forming tool design. The three general categories 4‐6 :
critical prediction is final part size with 1. geometrical details on the part,
sufficient accuracy to design tooling. 2. material and powder data,
3. shaping and sintering parameters.
As a demonstration of the situation,
consider a study on the sintered alloy FC‐ For solid‐state sintering, the convergence
0208 Fe‐2Cu‐0.8C 1 . This is the most of concepts took place in the 1980s. Each
popular alloy used in powder metallurgy of the support areas matured sufficiently
and is a favorite for automotive to enable predictions of density or
components, such as connecting rods. A shrinkage with relatively few adjustable
detailed simulation, customized to this parameters. In 1984, Hwang and German
alloy, was applied to a relatively simple 7 assembled a full model and treated
situation: 25 mm length, 7.16 g/cm3 green previously published neck growth data
density, heating 10°C/min to 1120°C for for copper spheres from Kingery and Berg
30 min in 80% N2 – 20 % H2, cooling at 8 . Using data for diffusion, surface
20°C/min. The computer predicted final energy, particle size, and starting green
length was 0.66% longer than the conditions, their predictions gave neck
measured length. The experimental growth from the combined diffusion
length variation was 0.06%, reflecting contributions. Figure 7.1 plots an example
typical production tolerances. on log‐log scaling, where neck size
Unfortunately, tooling design is not enlarges with isothermal sintering time
possible using this simulation, since the for 127 µm copper spheres at 1020°C.
113
 Kuen-Shyang Hwang

Hwang was born in Taiwan in 1953. He is a

professor in the department of materials science
and engineering at National Taiwan University.
He did his BS at the same institution and MS Figure 7.1. Examples of the predicted
under Fritz Lenel and PhD under Randall
German at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in
neck size versus sintering time log‐log
1984. His doctoral thesis revolved around an scaling for 127 µm copper spheres
early computer simulation of for multiple sintering at 1020°C. The plot compares
mechanism sintering, giving neck growth, computer simulated multiple mechanism
shrinkage, surface area loss, and densification.
model with experimental data. Volume
The ideas were extended to the capillary forces
between particles during liquid phase sintering. diffusion and surface diffusion act
simultaneously in this case.
After his MS, he worked at Brockway Pressed
Metals. Then after his PhD, he worked for Prior to this model, in 1974, Ashby
General Instrument, focused on sintered diode
heat sinks. He returned to Taiwan in 1988 to
applied concepts from creep and
take up the faculty position at National Taiwan deformation mapping to sintering 9 .
University. From 2003-2007 he was President of First, he predicted neck size versus key
the Republic of China (Taiwan) Powder processing parameters 10 . Subsequent
Metallurgy Association. Hwang was an early
efforts moved to density and grain size
advocate for powder injection molding, and
contributed much to the work force, science and predictions. The models allowed for the
technology for what are now enormous addition of applied pressure with varying
operations catering to consumer electronics, green density, grain size, and particle size
computer, and industrial tool markets. In 2001, as adjustable input parameters 11‐14 .
his textbook on powder metallurgy was released
to guide students in Taiwan and China. Formal release of the software came in
1990. Since pressure is an adjustable
parameter, these simulations are
In the simulations sintering time frequently termed HIP maps, in reference
advanced using iterative finite steps. With to hot isostatic pressing. Of course
each time step the sintering geometry in sintering is HIP with pressure set to 0
the neck region is adjusted based on vacuum or 0.1 MPa atmosphere .
calculated mass flow, geometric features, Other variants relying on similar
and gradients. The calculation cycle modeling concepts then emerged 15‐23 .
repeats until it captures the full sintering
cycle. To a point, the model improves in It was a natural step to combine
accuracy with smaller time steps. simulations of shaping such as die
However, cumulative errors restrict the compaction, forging, injection molding
time step from being too small. and sintering to predict final component
Implementation of such a computer size 2 . Usually the component‐level
calculation is relatively fast, measured in calculations involved finite element
seconds on a personal computer. analysis coupled to the densification

114
model 24‐29 . Figure 45 is an example of curve calculations rely on 10 to 20 input
such modeling. For this multiple step parameters 30 . In comparison, the
geometry, distortion occurs at the top simulations such as those used for HIP
thin section during sintering. The maps require 60 to 80 input parameters.
calculations help identify problems at the
thick‐thin junction and sharp corners. In the master sintering curve concept,
Nominally, the simulation is accurate, but factors such as heating rate, hold time,
not sufficiently accurate to design tooling peak temperature, and particle size are
or the sintering process. lumped into a single integral work term
25,32,33 . A single curve emerges that
links the sintering parameter density for
example with the calculated work of
sintering. This gives master curve based
on the integral of thermal work
Arrhenius model over the entire heating
cycle. Temperature is a critical factor,
since it determines diffusion and other
factors. The exponential temperature
effect can be included in spreadsheets
that integrate the thermal work over the
heating cycle. The resulting master
sintering curve is reasonably accurate in
predicting density, or microstructure,
distortion, binder removal, and even
sintered strength 33‐38 .

The master sintering curve approach
gives computational access to processing
scenarios useful for a variety of
objectives. For example, Figure 7.3 shows
the combinations of sintering time and

Figure 7.2. Illustration of finite element temperature required to form a dense
simulation of sintering. This multiple step tungsten body with a final grain size
component is 25 mm on the base. The below 100 nm. The calculations include
simulation correctly predicted distortion two starting particle sizes, assuming
in the thin top section, indicated by the compaction at 2 GPa pressure. The
bending from the vertical profile. possible trade‐off of sintering time,
temperature, and particle size is evident.
Accurate predictions require copious
input data and that can be a major Other calculations are able to predict the
burden. Alternative, the master sintering sintered strength for various processing
curve is a means to meld experiment and conditions 39 . The ideas extend to grain
model to predict sintered size versus size, component damage, and binder
different time‐temperature or other removal. Unfortunately, such calculations
parameters. Accurate master sintering teach that at times impractical

115
combinations of factors are required to
reach target properties 40 . As noted earlier, simulations are not
constructed to anticipate this variability
in incoming green body mass. Thus, a
single prediction of sintered size is of
little value, since production has a high
variability.

More recently, molecular dynamic models
emerged as a means to validate sintering
models. These models avoid the need for
copious material data and rely on
Figure 7.3. Master curve predictions of assigned atom interactions 41‐46 . The
time and temperature for nanoscale bad news is these simulations require
tungsten powder compaction 2000 MPa extended times on supercomputers.
and sintering to attain full density with a Attention is given to atomic level events,
final grain size below 100 nm. where each atom is included as a
A difficulty arises from variations in green vibrating entity. Large ensembles of
body properties. For example, Figure 7.4 atoms interact. An interatomic potential
plots the cumulative statistics from mass energy curve is the only input required,
measurements on an automotive main selected to match elastic, melting, and
bearing cap during three days of thermal expansion behavior. The
production. The values run from under resulting atomic level sintering
714 g to over 724 g coefficient of predictions are very similar to early two
variation of 0.5%, where coefficient of spheres pictures.
variation is the standard deviation
divided by mean . Figure 7.5 is an illustration of molecular
dynamic simulated neck growth for
nanoscale tungsten particles. Atomic
displacements are indicated by vectors
correspond to motion in each time
interval. Most of the neck growth takes
place at the surface and near‐surface
regions, indicating dominance by surface
diffusion with some grain boundary
diffusion. Volume diffusion is not evident
for these particles.

Multiple scale modeling is an idea for
bridging from particle two particle
bonding to optimization at the furnace

Figure 7.4. Cumulative mass variation for and component scales 47,48 . The
die pressed main bearing caps during different length scales and the hand‐off of
three days of production, with 0.5% information from the different scales are
mass variation. problems that are subjects of current
research.
116
 ideas of this sort have a good base 51 .
Trials with various materials and powder
types show the approach is only partially
successful so far 52 .

Another idea is to perform flash sintering,
but intense heating often tends to warp
the component. Thus, it is applied to
nanoscale powders deposited as thin
layers on substrates 53‐57 . One variant
relies on electrical discharge heating,
Figure 7.5. Four plots of the atomic again for thin potato chip type
positions in two tungsten nanoscale geometries.
spheres during sintering. Neck growth is
evident. Vectors indicate how each atom For the engineering component
moved during the specified time intervals. fabricator, the existing simulations and
Most of the motion is from near‐surface novel nontraditional heating approaches
atoms, with grain boundary diffusion are of low appeal. The fundamental need
emerging in the neck. in industry is not to understand atomic
motion, but to predict component size
Another area of intense research activity and properties. Unfortunately, sintering
is with nanoscale powders. In a sense, effects are sensitive to upstream
nanoscale is a solution looking for a gradients, such as in compaction.
problem. Nanoscale powders show great Particularly important are treatments
promise since their discovery several that help reduce sintering costs. In a
decades ago 49 . Most sintering sense a disjoint exists, where the
processes cause these powders to problems foremost for industry are
coarsen, giving micrometer scale sintered orthogonal to the problems being solved
grains, denying any advantage from the by research simulations.
small starting size 38 . So far, the
nanoscale range is interesting, but not With respect to the important attribute of
fundamentally influencing sintering, cost, models exist between the processing
except for thin films in electronics. conditions, raw material, and component
to provide sintering cost estimates 58‐
One novel sintering option has been 60 . The challenge is to apply the
demonstrated for yttria doped zirconia simulations to optimization objectives,
nanoscale powder. A two‐step cycle came such as determination of the path that
from I‐Wei Chen 50 . The first step delivers target strength with minimized
involves a higher temperature to densify distortion at the lowest cost.
the compact to a point where grain
growth accelerates. The second step is at Sintering theory must be robust to handle
a lower temperature to complete these several needs and the many process
densification with a reduced grain growth variants. Much progress is going on in this
rate. Earlier studies isolated the area 2 , and applications are being made
densification and coarsening steps, so over a variety of medical, energy,
electronic, metalworking, and automotive
117
components 61‐65 . However, the The quantitative ideas progressed from
models are sophisticated, requiring neck growth Kuczynski , to shrinkage
training to properly operate, while Kingery , to multiple mechanisms
companies are impatient so the time and Johnson . Ashby consolidated the
effort needed to master the simulations is isothermal models into a form that
often missing. enabled predictions of sintered attributes,
such as density, versus the adjustable
7.2. Pivotal Leaders   parameters, such as particle size. Other
groups extended these ideas to include
Collected information in this article nonisothermal situations 15,22,70‐73 .
provides perspective on the key As an example, Figure 7.6 plots sintering
individuals in the history of sintering. It is shrinkage versus sintering time for flake
the author’s opinion the most significant tantalum powder 1.9 µm in diameter and
contributions came from about a dozen 0.4 µm thick during a 10°C/min heat to a
individuals, listed in chronological order, 1350°C hold. The experimental measures
Boettger reasonably agree with the predicted
Wollaston shrinkage using a combination of surface
Acheson and grain boundary diffusion 70 .
Ostwald
Moissan With repeated demonstrations, the core
Coolidge theory for solid‐state, single‐phase
Frenkel sintering appears to be in reasonably
Lenel good shape. Newer treatments add
Kuczynski compact density gradients, nonisothermal
Kingery heating segments, particle size
Coble distributions, liquid formation,
Johnson electromigration, and chemical reactions.
Ashby.

Details on their careers and contributions
are covered elsewhere in this document.

7.3. Theory of Sintering 

The above individuals participated in the
transformation of ideas into a Figure 7.6. Sintering shrinkage during
quantitative theory of sintering. Details of heating and hold conditions using a
the geometric, kinetic, thermodynamic, multiple mechanism nonisothermal
and other aspects are established 4,5,66‐ sintering model. The illustration is for
69 . The proof is in the pudding, since a tantalum flakes and compares the
comprehensive sintering theory must simulation with experiment.
explain observations. In this regard much
progress has occurred. A critical infrastructure arose before
sintering theory. Early observations
noted some interesting relations. Figure

118
7.7 is an example of grain size versus decreases over time. This detail is missing
sintered density using experimental data from the models.
for alumina 74 comparing the data with
an early straight line conjecture by Coble In addition, more knowledge is needed on
75 , and a more recent model relating the sintering process parameters,
grain size to inverse square‐root of including substrate friction, furnace
fractional porosity 76 . Recognition of loading, and other practical conditions.
such relations takes time.
As practice advances, new issues arise,
such as how to model mixed powder
sintering. In two material structures, we
need to know how different powders can
be combined into a single body. It is
difficult to sinter such structures without
damage. Bordia and others 78,79 show
laminated and composite structures
delaminate or warp during densification.

Figure 7.7. Plot of grain size versus Rajendra K. Bordia
fractional sintered density for alumina,
Bordia attended Indian Institute of Technology in
showing how grain growth accelerates as Kanpur (BS in 1979) and Cornell University (MS
full density is attained. The lower straight 1981, PhD 1986).
line fit for data to about 0.92 fractional
density is the relation initially suggested Bordia is professor and department chair at
Clemson University, previously serving at the
by Coble.
University of Washington and DuPont research.
Bordia focused on damage and how constraint
This is just the beginning, since additional influences sintering densification, mostly for
data are needed for more detailed ceramic thin films and ceramic matrix composites.
predictions, such as the variation in grain Flaws emerge in systems where one portion of the
structure shrinks during sintering, while
boundary energy with crystal reinforcements, fibers, or laminates are not
misorientation. Otherwise, average undergoing densification. External stress retards
material parameters are used. As one damage. A highly cited publication is B. K. Bordia,
example, consider the solid‐solid grain R. Raj, “Sintering Behavior of Ceramic Films
Constrained by a Rigid Substrate,” Journal of the
boundary energy for copper with crystal American Ceramic Society, 1985, vol. 68, pp. 287-
misorientation 77 . Sintering models 292.
assume an average value. Yet during
sintering, the grains rotate and migrate His awards include Fellow of the American
toward the lowest energy orientations Ceramic Society and the DuPont Young Professor
Award. He served as co-chairman of sintering
and the effective grain boundary energy conferences in 2008 and 2011.


119
To summarize, consider the component As theory matured, we find critical
shown in Figure 7.8. There are two linkages formed that are only evident in
critical questions, the first is technical, retrospect. For example, Ostwald was the
and the second is economic – advisor professor for Whitney who then
1 Can the component be made to went on to teach at MIT. Whitney
specification technical ? consulted for General Electric and when
2 What is the cost economic ? asked to staff a new program in lamp
Sintering theory is advancing on many filament research, he reached back to
fronts to answer these questions with MIT, hired Coolidge, and coupled his
improved accuracy. efforts with Langmuir, from Stevens
Institute of Technology. After this team
developed the coiled tungsten lamp
filament, subsequent efforts focused on
drawing tungsten wires. Thus, the
Schroeter patent for liquid phase sintered
WC‐Co wire drawing dies was licensed by
General Electric in the USA.

Figure 7.8. A cell phone component
sintered from austenitic stainless steel
with about 15% shrinkage.

7.4. Linkages

Industrial sintering of engineering
components started long ago, probably
first for porcelain and then platinum in
the early 1800s. The science of sintering
followed, building upon advances in
related fields. This is similar to how
cheerleaders construct human pyramids
such as illustrated in Figure 7.9. First, a Figure 7.9. Sintering theory and its
base is constructed, and then progressive evolution is analogous to how
layers build on that base. With regard to cheerleaders create a human pyramid,
sintering theory, observations provided where a base is created to support
the base, then ideas on atomic structure subsequent layers.
and atomic motion followed, and finally
Years later, David Kingery, another MIT
mathematical treatments of sintering
professor consulting for GE, and
concepts emerged. Modeling started with
identified basic concepts in sintering.
two sphere models, but subsequent effort
George Kuczynski, was also a former MIT
brought about three‐dimensional
student. Coble as one of Kingery’s
component level simulations.
students went to work at General Electric

120
and developed translucent sintered Many rapid sintering studies rely on thin,
alumina. Coble returned to MIT as a small samples and focus on density 82‐
professor. Later his students were 85 . Materials include alumina, rhenium,
instrumental in developing sintered titanium, cemented carbide, titanates, and
covalent ceramics, several working at zirconia.
General Electric. Thus, in the history of
sintering the linkage between GE and MIT Fast heating induces significant stress
is impressive. gradients in the powder compact, often
leading to warpage. Thus, to deliver close
In much the same manner, other pockets dimensional tolerances, most bulk
of intense sintering research arose and component sintering relies on slower
matured. Often significant progress came heating cycles. Dimensional control is
from university‐industry partnerships. As worth much more than furnace time.
illustrated by the human pyramid, and
now frequently quoted, the advances are Rishi Raj reports certain ceramics exhibit
really a process of “standing on the rapid sintering in an applied electric field
shoulders of giants.” 53,56 . The component is held by
electrodes during first stage heating using
7.5. Concluding Remarks  times of 20 to 60 s. Then a current
discharge over about 10 s induces
Sintering is a thermal cycle used to bond densification. Required pressures are
particles. It is widely practiced in the unknown, but electrode contact clearly
manufacture of discrete engineering requires motion during densification. It
components. Because of the large proves useful for yttria‐doped zirconia.
commercial significance, industry treats The approach is novel, unexplained, but
sintering details as confidential currently limited to thin and flat shapes.
information. Throughout history,
sintering shows much evidence of Another development is sintering with a
empirical discovery far ahead of theory. pulsed electrical discharge ‐ termed field
Indeed one can ponder if there really are activated sintering, spark sintering, spark
many new ideas in sintering. plasma sintering, and similar names.
Electric arc processing started with
For example, one of the vogue concepts in Acheson in 1893, taken up by Moissan in
sintering is fast firing. The densification 1896, to form tungsten carbide. By 1910,
benefit of rapid heating was recognized in it was in use by Coolidge and others to
1973 80 . Demonstrations were for rapid sinter lamp filaments.
heating of titania TiO2 , showing 8 nm
powder gave 16% shrinkage in 20 s at By 1955, Lenel 86 reported full density
700°C. Subsequently, in 1989, Johnson in electrical discharge cycles measured in
81 relied on plasma heating to achieve seconds. His research included a first
rapid similar sintering of alumina. Today, report on sintered titanium with
the process is widely used to form attractive mechanical properties.
conductive silver pathways on ceramics. However, impurity removal in a slow
heating cycle, proves necessary prior to
rapid heating.

121
 frequency of water at 2.45 GHz is
inexpensive. But heating is nonuniform
and most units run in a batch mode that is
slow in cooling, reducing the productivity.

Rishi Raj Thus, the developments in sintering need
to be held up to a simple litmus test. Do
Raj was born in India and received his first they impact on practical needs? The
degree in electrical engineering at the University direction in the sintered materials field is
of Durham. He did his doctorate in 1970, at
Harvard University, in applied sciences. His toward complex shapes, higher sintered
employment included positions at Chase Brass densities, and tighter tolerances. New
and Copper, University of Colorado, Cornell developments, either practical or
University, and University of Colorado again. theoretical, must align with showing how
Raj Bordia was one of his students at Cornell.
to make complicated components with
Raj was recognized via a Guggenheim great properties, at low costs and small
Fellowship, Humboldt Award, and visiting dimensional variation.
positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory
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8. Acknowledgements 

This article includes profiles on about a
hundred individuals important to
developing sintering to its current status.
I was most fortunate to have met about
half of these individuals during my career.

Several people and organizations helped
in compiling the information contained in
this article by reaching into archival files.
The impetus for this effort arose from an
invitation by Eugene Olevsky and Suk‐
Joong Kang to present a keynote lecture
on sintering theory at the 2011
International Sintering Conference.
Subsequently, Kahled Morsi urged
expansion of the effort for the Materials
Science and Technology Conference and
TMS Annual Meeting in 2012. The final
driver was a decision to retire from active
teaching with a desire to document my
views on things emerged in sintering.

Several people helped verify facts and
find buried documents. Special thanks go
to Wei Li and Lanny Pease in this regard.
Additional insights came from discussions
with Animesh Bose, Kenneth Brookes,
Michael Brooks, Michael Conaway, Sharon
Elder, Zak Fang, Howard Glicksman,
Donald Heaney, Eugene Olevsky, Shuang
Qiao, Louis Rector, Kempton Roll, Gopal
Upadhyaya, and Timothy Young. Other
insights arose via consulting projects and
expert witness reports. Finally, I am most
thankful for the support provided by
several companies and government
agencies during my career.

128
9. Author   Fellow of APMI, ASM, and ACerS. His
awards include the Tesla Medal, Nanyang

Professorship, Japan Institute for
Randall Rand German's focus is on net‐
Materials Research Lectureship, and
shape fabrication of engineering
awards from several universities. He is
materials via sintering techniques. His
editor or key reader for 20 journals and
career included Associate Dean of
served on several advisory boards.
Engineering, San Diego State University

2008 – on ; CAVS Chair Professor and
Rand supervised more than 100 theses,
Director of the Center Advanced
published 1030 articles, 25 patents, and
Vehicular Systems, Mississippi State
19 books, including Sintering Theory and
University; Brush Chair Professor in
Practice. Rand has been involved in a
Materials and Director of the Center for
dozen start‐up companies.
Innovative Sintered Products at
Pennsylvania State University 1991 –
2005 ; Hunt Professor of Materials
Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute 1980‐1991 ; Director of
Research, J. M. Ney Co. and Mott Corp.;
Staff Member, Sandia, Livermore, CA; and
Materials Scientist, Battelle Columbus
Laboratories.

His PhD is from the University of
California ‐ Davis 1975 , MS from Ohio
State University 1971 , and BS from San
Jose State University 1968 . He Rand German with Harb Nayer, Harb
completed management science at RPI studied under George Kuczynski MS
and academic management at Harvard. and Fritz Lenel PhD . Harb heads TAT
Technologies in St Marys, PA.

Rand German delivering plenary
presentation at Sintering 2011, Jeju,
Korea. Rand with Karin and Hans Exner in La
Jolla at Sintering 2008.
He has an honorary doctorate from the
University Carlos III de Madrid and is a

129

Granddaughter Savannah catching up on her reading using a copy of Metal Injection
Molding. It is dedicated to her, but she says it has too many words.

130
10. Alphabetical Listing of Short Biographies  
last name key contribution page
Acheson electric discharge for the synthesis of silicon carbide 45
Arrhenius statistical mechanics, activated chemical complexes 88
Ashby sintering and hot compaction maps 67
Bingham yield effects in viscous flow of solids 78
Bloxam first patent on vacuum electric current sintering 46
Boettger first European porcelain process 37
Boltzmann distribution of energy in thermally activated systems 87
Bordia constrained sintering, laminates, composites 119
Bose sintering of composites formed by injection molding 104
Brewer compound formation via strong exothermic reactions 80
Bridgman high pressure and high temperature synthesis 57
Brinell early quantitative hardness tests 101
Chen nanoscale densification cycles without grain growth 76
Coble grain boundary diffusion, creep, sintering models 73
Comstock early research on sintered filters, abrasives 56
Coolidge sintered tungsten for ductile lamp filaments 14
Dalton first conceptualization of atoms and stoichiometry 83
Danninger physical chemistry of reactions during steel sintering 68
DeHoff quantitative microscopy of topological evolution in sintering 67
Dorn integrated model for deformation of solids 90
Duwez early dilatometry data and amorphous metals 15
Edison created drive for sintered lamp materials 32
Einstein conjecture of viscous and diffusion linkage 77
Exner careful studies on neck growth, grain rotation 23
Fang atmosphere induced functional gradients in sintered bodies 104
Fick diffusional flow along concentration gradients 87
Frenkel viscous flow model for two particle sintering 73
Fulrath hot stage scanning electron microscopy of liquid phase 66
German consolidated text, models for densification, semisolid 128
Goetzel promoted hot pressing for hard materials and cermets 22
Gurland identification of percolation conditions in mixed phases 96
Hales particle packing to understand grain shape 91
Hausner global organizer, editor, teacher, and early pioneer 9
Herring scaling laws, surface tension, creep deformation 85
Hobbs sintering study of ice for atmosphere sample dating 7
Hooke laws on elastic deformation and atomic structure 83
Huntington proof of vacancy diffusion, electro‐migration theory 76
Huppmann careful demonstration of rearrangement in sintering 53
Hwang computer simulation for multiple mechanism neck growth 114
Ivensen phenomenological dimensionless densification models 20

131
Johnson multiple mechanisms, and plasma sintering 86
Kang detailed grain boundary engineering during sintering 25
Kawasaki functional gradient materials and thermo‐electro materials 69
Kaysser fundamentals of liquid phase sintering rearrangement 54
Kelvin idea of pressure or stress from surface curvature 98
Kingery quantitative shrinkage equations 16
Kirkendall vacancy motion in diffusion 89
Kuczynski diffusional neck growth model without densification 34
Langmuir atomic kinetics, gas absorption, filament design 47
Lenel liquid phase sintering, ferrous alloys, spark sintering 23
Lux application of spark sintering to refractory metals 44
Messing microstructure control via template grain growth 70
Miura developments in sintered high performance metals 71
Moissan discovery of tungsten carbide via electric furnace 45
Munir field effect sintering and combustion synthesis 68
Nabarro deformation by volume diffusion creep 89
Newton linear viscosity model 78
Nichols early computer model for surface diffusion sintering 10
Nobili thermocouple using thermoelectric effect 99
Olevsky continuum theory of sintering for finite element analysis 11
Ostwald grain coarsening, training of critical actors in sintering 48
Park advances in computer modeling of sintered processes 72
Pask specialization in ceramics, especially sintered mullite 66
Pauling construct of model for atomic bonding types 84
Perrin demonstration of atomic motion in Brownian motion 84
Petzow silicon nitride sintering, creation of research teams 53
Plunkett discovery of PTFE, an important sintered polymer 64
Raj fast sintering and sinter forging 121
Rayleigh microstructure transformation using models of jetting 82
Rhines surface energy, quantitative aspects of microstructure 31
Ristic publications, organizations East‐West sintering meetings 24
Roberts‐Austin early demonstration of diffusion 88
Rockwell invented macroscale hardness test for hard materials 101
Roll organized and guided trade association for sintered metals 9
Roy provoked interest in microwave sintering 79
Samsonov activated sintering based on electron concentration 79
Sauerwald early conceptual treatment of sintering temperature 93
Sauveur study of microstructure using optical microscopy 76
Schwarzkopf basic research and documentation on hard materials 22
Seebeck thermoelectric effect for temperature quantification 98
Seitz solid‐state atomic vacancy motion theory 77
Shewmon grain boundary diffusion in sintering 90
Smith grain structure for geometric sintering models 21
Sobolevskii sintered platinum powder to form coins 42

132
Song published first description of porcelain sintering 37
Sorby father of microstructure and metallurgy 92
Stefan provided important insight to atomic bonding and motion 88
Tammann sintered carbides and ideas on sintering temperature 50
Teller gas absorption technique for measuring surface area 102
Torralba high performance ferrous alloys, tool steels by sintering 105
Upadhyaya sintering of mixed powder composites 26
Watanabe quantification of the sintering trajectory over long times 69
Weibull distribution functions used for sintered grain size 94
Wollaston first commercial sintered platinum process 33

133
 Sintered bronze sculpture by Phil Sumpter of cowboy Bose Eckhart. This highly details
structure is 125 mm tall, formed using wax‐binder assisted powder casting into a silicone
rubber mold, followed by wick debinding and nitrogen sintering near 800°C.

134
11. Index  Grain Boundary Diffusion, 20, 71, 90, 116
Grain Growth, 92, 119

Grain Shape, 81, 93, 95
Abrasives, 55‐56
Grain Size Distribution, 94
Activated Sintering, 52, 74, 79, 122

Additive Manufacturing, 64
Hardness, 101
Alumina, 16, 49‐55, 70‐73, 86, 94, 118
Highlights, 65
Atmosphere Control, 103‐104
Historical Milestones, 31‐34
Atomic Motion, 86‐91
Historical Segments, 34
Atomic Structure, 82
Hot Isostatic Pressing, 51, 67‐71, 103, 114
Atomic Theory, 81‐84
Hot Pressing, 22, 54‐56
Automotive Gears, 63


Ice, 7
Background, 19
Induration, 12, 43‐44
Batch Vacuum Furnace, 100
Injection Molding, 8‐10
Bearings, 53‐55
International Team for Sintering, 30
Belt Furnace, 100
Introduction, 13
Bronze, 36, 53‐55, 57, 102
Iron Ore, 12, 43

Iron, 38‐39, 95‐97
Cemented Carbides, 49‐51

Ceramic Earthenware, 35
Lamp Filaments, 32‐33, 44‐49
Coalescence, 92
Lattice Diffusion, 34, 78, 85, 90, 114
Compaction Press, 41
Lever Compaction Press, 41
Computer Simulation, 10‐11, 113‐117
Linkages, 120
Copper, 7, 9, 14, 31, 34, 38‐39, 70, 72, 76
Liquid Phases, 40, 49‐52, 62, 92, 95


Definition, 13‐14
Main Bearing Cap, 116
Delphi Pillar, 39
Measurement Tools, 97‐101
Desktop Manufacturing, 64
Metal Powder Industries Federation, 8
Diamond, 55‐56
Microstructure, 91‐97
Die Compaction, 8
Molecular Dynamics, 116‐117
Diesel Filters, 63
Multiple Mechanisms, 86, 90‐91, 114, 118
Diffusion, 86‐91

Diffusion‐Viscosity, 85
Nanoscale, 74, 76, 116‐117
Dilatometry, 14
Necessary Infrastructure, 81
Dislocation Flow, 7, 86, 90
Neck Growth, 13, 72, 85, 114
Dragon Kiln, 36
Neck Size, 105, 113‐114

Newer Tools, 105
Early Products, 35
Nickel, 13
Elastic Modulus, 97


Onset of Sintering Science, 31
Ferrotic, 62
Oswald Ripening, 92
Finite Element Analysis, 112, 115
Overview, 7
Furnaces, 98


Patent Rate, 24
Gold‐Platinum, 40
Pivotal Leaders, 118
135
Plastic Flow, 22, 71‐72, 86‐90
Platinum, 39‐42 Weibull Distribution, 94
Polycrystalline Diamond, 56 Wire Drawing Dies, 49‐51
Porcelain, 35‐38
Pore Size, 31, 54‐55, 85, 93‐95, 105
Pressure Generation, 103
Property Quantification, 101
Publication Rate, 25
Putting Things Together, 113

Qualitative Sintering Concepts, 71‐74
Quick Hot Isostatic Pressing, 103

Radiation Shields, 51‐52
Rapid Heating, 46, 86, 121‐122
Rapid Prototyping, 64

Shrinkage, 14‐20, 34, 69‐72, 85, 101
Silicon Nitride, 96
Silver, 38‐39
Sintered Metals, 38‐43
Sintering Developments, 63
Sintering Simulations, 113‐117
Sintering Theory, 19‐20
Spark Sintering, 23, 41, 44‐47, 99
Stainless Steel, 15‐18, 103, 120
Steel, 7‐9, 49, 53, 63, 76, 93, 96‐103
Strength Evolution, 102
Superabrasives, 56
Supersolidus Sintering, 53, 70, 71
Surface Area, 102‐103
Surface Diffusion, 34, 72, 78, 90, 114, 116
Surface Energy, 84‐86

Tantalum, 118
Teflon®, 63
Temperature Measurement, 97
Theory of Sintering, 118‐120
Titanium, 22‐23, 49, 56, 99, 103
Tungsten Carbide, 49‐51
Tungsten Heavy Alloy, 52
Tungsten, 44‐49, 116‐117

Underpinnings, 64‐65

Volume Diffusion, 34, 78, 85, 90, 114
136