Kinetics of template growth in alumina during the process of templated grain growth (TGG)

Kinetics of texture development in liquid-phase sintered alumina ceramics has been studied during templated grain growth (TGG); a technique for developing crystallographic texture in ceramic bodies via the grain growth of aligned anisometric particles in a dense and fine grain size matrix. It has been shown that significant template growth is observed only at high densities (∼91% TD). The template growth in the radial direction followed a cubic growth law just like the growth of a single crystal {112̄0} and {011̄2} planes during the initial stage of TGG, suggesting that diffusion is the rate-limiting step for radial growth.