ABSTRACT
Most books on making ceramic bodies focus on the dominant technology of consolidating and densification of (primarily chemically derived) powders, mainly via sintering [1-3]. These books provide valuable insight into the underlying scientific principles that control such processing, as well as provide useful information on many of the process parameters, but their perspective on choice of fabrication method(s) is a basic one rather than an engineering one. Thus, such books generally have limited or no information on many of the important engineering or cost aspects of producing ceramic components. Further, even within their more basic scope, they are generally focused on the most common methods, e.g., of liquid chemical preparations of powders and their die pressing and sintering. Generally, they provide limited or no information on other methods of producing ceramic components, e.g., of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or various melt processing routes, and typically no information on the property and engineering trade-offs between different basic production methods or within variations of a given approach, such as sintering of bodies from different forming methods. Thus, while existing books address the use of additives in densification, they do so only in broad terms of liquid-phase sintering, not by discussing specific additive uses for sintering, and they do not address a number of other additive uses. Furththere is limited discussion of the shape, especially of component size, capabilities of the processing and fabrication technologies addressed, nor their cost aspects.
