Sintering ceramics at lower temperatures has been an important objective pursued for decades due to potential economic (e.g., reduced energy consumption) and material (e.g., finer microstructures) benefits.

Among the techniques explored for this purpose, the cold sintering process (CSP) introduced by Guo et al.¹ has proved incredibly efficient over a wide range of materials, including ceramics, polymers, metals, and also new composite systems.²

CSP uses a transient liquid phase and external pressure to activate densifying mechanisms, which allow the consolidation of the materials at relatively lower temperatures than traditional sintering processes. The simplicity of the CSP experimental setup belies the numerous mechanisms that occur during low-temperature sintering (Figure 1): rearrangement of grains, dissolution of atoms at the beginning of sintering, diffusion of matter toward the pores/reprecipitation, and finally grain growth.