Effect of post-sinter annealing on the properties of ceramics

Sintering has been the most conventional way of fabrication of ceramics. However, it has been observed that sintering can induce compositional inhomogeneity, formation of secondary phases, formation of defects, internal stresses etc. Even though post fabrication annealing has been a key process for bringing about the compositional homogeneity and relieving the internal stresses in metallic systems it remained ignored by and large in ceramics systems. However, in recent times (in last 10-15 years), there have been sizable attempts to correlate effects of post sinter annealing on various properties of ceramics. Since ceramics are used for niche electrical, mechanical, optical and thermal applications it has been attempted to summarize the effect of post sinter annealing on the above properties in this article.