Influence of ZnO specific surface area on its sintering kinetics

The aim of this work is an investigation of isothermal sintering kinetics by observing the reduction of the specific surface area of ZnO. Zinc oxide powder is sintered isothermally in air for 5 to 120 min at temperatures from 400 to 900°C. The decrease in the specific surface area is observed as a function of temperature and sintering time. Models of Ristic-Jovanovic and German are applied in order to define the appropriate parameters. Information on the activation energy of sintering is obtained by the Arrhenius equation. The least square estimation (LSE) method was applied for determining optimum parameter values. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc