Spark Plasma Sintering of Undoped SnO2 Ceramics

Various parameters in spark plasma sintering(SPS), such as sintering temperature, holding time, heating rate, and pressure, were adopted to investigate their effects on the densification of pure SnO2 power. The obtained experimental data show that the SPS process enhances densification. The high-density undoped SnO2 ceramics (96.6% of theoretical) was obtained at much lower temperature (1000 degrees C), within a much shorter time, compared to the conventional sintering process. The high-density undoped SnO2 ceramics (96.6% of theoretical) were obtained by SPS, under the condition of temperature:1000 degrees C, pressure: 40 MPa, heating-rate: 200 degrees C/min, and holding time: 3 min