Morphological and mechanistic complications

A continuous homogenization and milling during reaction is recommended in order to accelerate the equilibration process. Thus, complex morphologies and contact problems are ubiquitous in such cases, for purely practical reasons, because of the 

On the other hand, plane interfaces are not always stable even when well wetted. Let us investigate the consequence of a morphological perturbation of the plane M/oxide interface [439,500-502] as shown in Fig. 6.72. Since, during the course of 

Plane interfaces are mostly not desired for kinetic reasons, not to mention the fact that powdered educts are usuedly much cheaper. 

Ideal sintering necessitates spatial displacement of all components and requires high temperatures. (In order to achieve dense samples (see e.g. Fig. 5.29) significant pressure is usually applied.) So diffusion-controlled creep of an oxygen ion-conducting oxide MO is determined by the cation diffusion and is an eraibipolar process as described above (see also Section 6.3.3). 

Some thermodynamic aspects of ceramic processing have been discussed in Section 5.4. The reader is directed to the extensive ceramic or metalliugy literature for further information [133,161,507]. 

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