LMO ceramics microstructure

Abstract

The aim of this work was to characterize the microstructure of LMO type ceramics. The ceramics obtained by the free sintering at two temperatures 1473 K and 1573 K and two sintering times 6 and 12 h was the test material. One series was also obtained by the hot pressing method for a comparison. In all the cases the material synthesis was conducted by the solid-state reaction method at 1173 for 24 h. Photographs of the specimen fractures were taken by a scanning electron microscope to characterize the microstructure of the ceramics obtained in a more detailed way. The VISILOG 4 system, enabling to calculate a lot of parameters characterizing the material microstructure, such as e.g.: a number of grains on the unit area, an average grain size, shape indexes of the grains in question, was used as well. It allows determining a grain size distribution, and a frequency of presence of grains with the specific shape index. By analyzing a set of the parameters obtained an influence of the technological conditions on the microstructure of the material in question, and on its properties and applicability at the same time can be determined.