DEVELOPMENT OF TEXTURED MICROSTRUCTURES IN CERAMICS WITH LARGE THERMAL-EXPANSION ANISOTROPY

Fe2TiO5 exhibits a high degree of anisotropy in both thermal expansion and paramagnetic susceptibility. Anisotropy in paramagnetic susceptib ility allows textured microstructures to be produced using magneticall y-assisted grain alignment during sample fabrication. The resulting so lid-state sintered aligned samples had a b-axis orientation coefficien t of 3.33 (vs 6.60 for an aligned powder-epoxy suspension) where an or ientation coefficient of 1 represents a randomly-oriented sample. This texturing reduced the residual stresses generated from the large ther mal expansion anisotropy of the control samples, as evidenced by reduc ed microcracking and morphological texturing of the aligned microstruc ture.