Microwave sintering of ceramic materials provides an exciting alternative to conventional sintering processes. Typically, microwave sintering offers efficient and rapid thermal heating of ceramic materials that absorb microwave radiations. However, microwave sintering has its challenges, which include a poor understanding of microwave - materials interactions, unstable heating resulting in a thermal runaway, and localized melting. A new method has been proposed under this program which addresses many of these challenges. This method is especially well suited for complex ceramic oxide systems that are difficult to process by microwave radiation. A suitable transient - lossy - phase will be selected that will absorb microwave radiation promoting a reaction with other phases to form a complex oxide system that has low dielectric loss, thus limiting further microwave adsorption. Such self limiting or "smart" microwave processing can be used to solve many problems associated with microwave sintering. "Smart" microwave processing will yield materials with highly reproducible properties. This process will allow rapid processing of ceramic materials. This research work will also provide a significant dielectric properties database which will be useful for academic research as well as industrial applications.
