Densification behaviour and two stage master sintering curve in lithium sodium niobate ceramics

The Master Sintering Curve (MSC) has received much attention in recent years due to its ability to predict sintering behaviour of a given powder and green body process regardless of its thermal history. In this paper MSC, based on the combined stage sintering model is constructed for one of the most important lead-free piezoelectric viz. lithium sodium niobate, Na1-xLixNbO3 (x=0.12, LNN-12), ceramic using shrinkage data. The present study has been carried out to understand and control the densification behaviour during pressureless sintering. Two distinct stages of densification have been observed en route to the upper limit to sintering temperature. The activation energies of densification for the two temperature ranges viz. 800–1150 °C and 1150–1300°C were found to be 365 kJ/mol and 2530 kJ/mol, respectively, through the construction of MSC. The MSC should be useful in predicting the densification behaviour and the final density and for designing a reproducible fabrication schedule for the LNN-12 ceramics.