The advent of nanoparticles caught significant attention from the sintering community looking for lowering sintering temperatures of ceramics.

In principle, nanoparticles have high surface areas and, according to the most accepted sintering theories, the driving force for densification relies on the curvatures of the particles and their surface energies. The excess of both leads one to expect pronounced sintering when substituting microsized particles by those with sizes at the nanoscale. Researchers hoped more pronounced densification with shorter sintering times could potentially retain nanoscale grain sizes in the final sintered body and result in, for example, improved mechanical strength.