Electric fields and the future of scalability in spark plasma sintering

To date, spark plasma sintering (SPS) has enjoyed much success in materials research and lesser, but growing, success in industrial applications. To some degree, the limitations in usage can be associated with the specific knowledge of the nature of the contributions and benefits that SPS provides over traditional sintering apparati. As sample dimension requirements are increased, the energy requirements of production become problematic and the scalability of the technique is an open question.