Spark Plasma Sintering of a Ceramic Material with a LaLuO₃ Perovskite-Type Structure

Abstract

The development of new materials for various fields of science and technology has always been an important and priority task for scientists around the world. Recently, more and more interest in the creation of new materials has been drawn to compounds based on the perovskite phase with the general formula ABO3. The ability of the perovskite structure to adapt to different combinations of chemical elements leads to the possibility of creating new materials with different physical and chemical characteristics. In the present study, an ordered phase with a LaLuO3 perovskite-type structure was synthesized using the mechanosynthesis technique. The obtained material was sintered by spark plasma sintering. It was found that the formation of an ordered phase with a perovskite-type structure occurs directly during spark plasma sintering. A dense (99.7%) single-phase sample with a LaLuO3 perovskite-type structure was obtained. Despite the rather high density of the obtained sample (99.7%), it remains translucent for a number of reasons: the obtained sample is characterized by randomly oriented grains, which creates additional optical scattering.