Field‐Assisted Sintering of Nb–Al2O3 Composite Materials and Investigation of Electrical Conductivity

Field‐assisted sintering technique (FAST) is used for the preparation of Nb–Al2O3 composite materials. The electrical conductivity is investigated depending on the particle size of the used starting powders and under varying volume contents of the refractory metal in the starting powder mixture. The percolation threshold is investigated and found to be influenced not only by the metal fraction but also by the particle size of the alumina used for sample preparation. For the fine‐ and coarse‐grained alumina, a percolation threshold of 17.5 and 10 vol% Nb is estimated, respectively. Furthermore, the microstructure is investigated to gain a basic understanding of the dependency between microstructural features and the resulting material properties on the macroscopic scale. Also, the influence of the sintering process and the resulting microstructure–properties relationship is considered. It could be shown that the electrical properties are anisotropic because of anisotropy effects caused by the FAST process. Field‐assisted sintering is used for producing Nb–Al2O3 composites. It is found that for these Nb–Al2O3 composites the use of alumina powders with different particle size distributions influences the microstructure and the percolation threshold. Percolation threshold is reduced to 10 vol% Nb for the use of coarse‐grained alumina, compared with 17.5 vol% Nb for the use of fine‐grained alumina.