Titanium diboride (TiB2) is considered one of the most suitable candidate materials for applications as wettable cathodes in redesigned aluminium smelting cells. In this work, titanium diboride compacts have been produced from powders using a wet colloidal processing approach combined with pressureless sintering for densification. The approach has good potential to reduce the manufacturing cost compared to hot-pressing. Owing to the elevated cost of the raw materials, the possibility of mixing powders with different particle sizes (more expensive fine and less expensive coarse powder) has been explored. The outcome of this study is very promising, since using two different particle sizes improved the particle packing of the green material resulting in sintered densities around 80% of the theoretical density at 2000°C.
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