A gravity-driven sintering method to fabricate geometrically complex compact piezoceramics

Highly compact and geometrically complex piezoceramics are required by a variety of electromechanical devices owing to their outstanding piezoelectricity, mechanical stability and extended application scenarios. 3D printing is currently the mainstream technology for fabricating geometrically complex piezoceramic components. However, it is hard to print piezoceramics in a curve shape while also keeping its compactness due to restrictions on the ceramic loading and the viscosity of feedstocks. Here, we report a gravity-driven sintering (GDS) process to directly fabricate curved and compact piezoceramics by exploiting gravitational force and high-temperature viscous behavior of sintering ceramic specimens. The sintered lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramics possess curve geometries that can be facilely tuned via the initial mechanical boundary design, and exhibit high piezoelectric properties comparable to those of conventional-sintered compact PZT (d33 = 595 pC/N). In contrast to 3D printing technology, our GDS process is suitable for scale-up production and low-cost production of piezoceramics with diverse curved surfaces. Our GDS strategy is an universal and facile route to fabricate curved piezoceramics and other functional ceramics with no compromise of their functionalities.

DETERMINATION OF THE DIMENSIONAL AND TOPOLOGICAL PARAMETERS OF THE GRAPHITE PHASE IN CAST IRON BY FRACTAL ANALYSIS OF IMAGES OF ITS MICROSTRUCTURE

The basics of metallography and modern systems used for studying and analyzing the structures of materials are described. Special attention is paid to the techniques of quantitative microscopy, as a kind of ancestress of modern microstructure analysis systems. The analysis of modern computer programs used to analyze images of microstructures obtained from digital microscopes is presented. The basics of fractal analysis as a highly effective tool for calculating numerical values of parameters of geometrically complex objects are outlined. Using the example of the analysis of graphitized cast iron structure, the application of the fractal analysis method to determine such characteristics of the graphite phase as the shape of graphite inclusions and their distribution in the alloy volume is demonstrated. As part of the study, various classes of cast iron have been studied, such as graphitic pig iron with flaked graphite, cast iron with vermicular graphite, and high-grade cast iron with spheroidal graphite. To determine the shape of graphite inclusions, a fractal dimension has been proposed to be used, and the unevenness of the distribution has been estimated using such a function as lacunarity. The individual stages of determining these characteristics using a specialized FracLac module applied in the structure of the ImageJ program are presented. The obtained results showed high adequacy. Despite positive assessment, the shortcomings identified during the research on the use of fractal analysis methods for identifying geometrically complex dimensional and topological parameters inherent in the graphite phase in cast iron are noted. The ways for further improvement of these methods for solving a wide range of problems in metallography of alloys are proposed.