ZrTiO4 materials obtained by spark plasma reaction-sintering

Zirconium titanate (ZrTiO4), have many attractive properties such as high resistivity, high dielectric constant, high permittivity at microwave frequencies and excellent temperature stability for microwave properties. Zirconium titanate dense materials are proposed for many structural applications, but fully reacted and completely dense pieces are difficult to obtain by conventional routes. In this work, fully dense zirconium titanate materials (∼98%) were obtained at lower temperatures (1300–1400 °C) and short processing time by non-conventional technique; spark plasma-reaction sintering (SPRS). Homogeneous and stable starting powders mixture with the adequate composition was prepared from the raw materials: m-ZrO2 (∼0.3 μm) and anatase-TiO2 (∼40 nm). Dense materials were mechanically and microstructural characterised. The fracture strength was measured by biaxial testing, giving values of about 200 MPa.