Recent Developments of High-Pressure Spark Plasma Sintering: an Overview of Current Applications, Challenges and Future Directions

Spark plasma sintering (SPS), also called pulsed electric current sintering (PECS) or field-assisted sintering technique (FAST) is a technique for sintering powder under moderate uniaxial pressure (max. 0.15 GPa) and high temperature (up to 2500 °C). It has been widely used over the last few years as it can achieve full densification of ceramic or metal powders with lower sintering temperature and shorter processing time compared to conventional processes, opening up new possibilities for nanomaterials densification. More recently, new frontiers of opportunities are emerging by coupling SPS with high pressure (up to ~10 GPa). A vast exciting field of academic research is now using high-pressure SPS (HP-SPS) in order to play with various parameters of sintering, like grain growth, structural stability and chemical reactivity, allowing the full densification of metastable or hard-to-sinter materials. This review summarizes the various benefits of HP-SPS for the sintering of many classes of advanced functional materials. It presents the latest research findings on various HP-SPS technologies with particular emphasis on their associated metrologies and their main outstanding results obtained. Finally, in the last section, this review lists some perspectives regarding the current challenges and future directions in which the HP-SPS field may have great breakthroughs in the coming years.