The Mg-enriched magnesium aluminum silicate (MAS) glass is known for its higher mechanical strength and chemical resistance. Among such glasses, cordierite (Mg2Al4Si5O18) is well known to have a low thermal expansion and low melting point. Polycrystalline engineering ceramics such as alumina can be strengthened by a surface modification with low thermal expansion materials. The present study involves the synthesis of cordierite by a sol-gel process and investigates the effect of glass penetration on the surface of alumina. The cordierite powders were prepared from Al(OC3H7)3, Mg(OC2H5)2 and tetraethyl orthosilicate by hydrolysis and condensation reaction. The cordierite powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD, Rigaku), scanning electron microscope (SEM, JEOL: JSM-5610), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS, JEOL: JSM-5610), and universal testing machine (UTM, INSTRON). The X-ray diffraction patterns showed that the synthesized particles were μ-cordierite calcined at 1100˚C for 1 h. The shape of synthesized cordierite was changed from μ-cordierite to α-cordierite with increasing calcination temperature. Synthesized cordierite was used for surface modification of alumina. Cordierite powders penetrated deeply into the alumina sample along grain boundaries with increasing temperature. The results of surface modification tests showed that the strength of the prepared alumina sample increased after surface modification. The strength of a surface modified with synthesized cordierite increased the most, to about 134.6MPa.

Mesoporous alumina particles were prepared by spray pyrolysis using cetyltrimethyl-ammonium bromide (CTAB) as a structure directing agent and the effect of Al precursor types on the texture properties was studied using N2 adsorption isotherms, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The surface area and the microstructure of alumina particles were significantly influenced by the Al precursor type. The largest BET surface area was obtained when Al chloride was used, whereas alumina particles prepared from Al acetate had the largest pore volume. According to small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) analysis, the alumina powders prepared using nitrate and acetate precursors had a clear single SAXS peak around 2θ = 1.0~1.5°, indicating that regular mesopores with sponge-like structure were produced. On the basis of TEM, SAXS, and N2 isotherm results, the chloride precursor was most profitable to obtain the largest surface area (265 m2/g), whereas, the nitrate precursor is useful for the preparation of non-hollow mesoporous alumina with regular pore size, maintaining high surface area (~233 m2/g).

Alumina microcomponents have distinguishing advantages over Si counterpart. However, the shrinkage of alumina, as high as 20%, makes it difficult to produce precision components meeting a high tolerance. A new fabrication process presented to greatly reduce the shrinkage by producing alumina microcomponents from ultrafine Al powder. The process consists of forming Al powder components through sintering and turning the Al powder component into alumina. In this way, the shrinkage occurring in sintering the Al powder component will be compensated by the expansion appearing when the Al powder component turns into alumina. The process has proven successful.

The with various phases were prepared by simple ex-situ hydrolysis and spark plasma sintering (SPS) process of Al powder. The nano bayerite phase was derived by hydrolysis of commercial powder of Al with micrometer size, whereas the bohemite (AlO(OH)) phase was obtained by hydrolysis of nano Al powder synthesized by pulsed wire evaporation (PWE) method. Compaction as well as dehydration of both nano bayerite and bohemite was carried out simultaneously by SPS method, which is used to fabricate dense powder compacts with a rapid heating rate of per min. under the pressure of 50MPa. After compaction treatment in the temperature ranges from , the bayerite and bohemite phases change into various alumina phases depending on the compaction temperatures. The bayerite shows phase transition of sequences. On the other hand, the bohemite experiences the phase transition from AlO(OH) to It shows AlO(OH) sequences. The compacted at shows a high surface area .

Nanoscale Al powder with thin layer of alumina was produced by Wire Electric Explosion (WEE) process. Spark-Plasma Sintering (SPS) was performed for the produced powder to confirm the effectiveness of SPS like so-called 'surface-cleaning effect' and so on. Crystallite size and alumina content of produced powder varied with the ratio of input energy to sublimation energy of Al wire (): Increase in () resulted in the decrease of crystallite size and the increase of alumina content. Shrinkage curve during SPS process showed that the oxide surface layer could not be destroyed near the melting point of Al. It implied that there was not enough or no spark-plasma effect during SPS for Al/Alumina powder.