Paper from MAFA receives the 2021 Acta Student Awards

João V. Campos has been awarded the 2021 Acta Student Award. This award is limited to candidates whose work was reported in one of the Acta Journals as a full-length paper, and who were students at the time the work was performed. A team of judges consisting of editors from Acta Materialia, Scripta Materialia, Acta Biomaterialia, and Materialia evaluated the nominees, considering the quality of the paper for which the individual was nominated, recommendation letters, and leadership potential. 

The awarded paper, On the Arrhenius-like behavior of conductivity during flash sintering of 3 mol% yttria stabilized zirconia ceramics, was published in Scripta Materialia as a result of a collaboration between João and his Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Eliria M. J. A. Pallone, with Prof. Lílian from MAFA. In the paper. we discuss the Arrhenius behavior of electrical conductivity σ during flash sintering of 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (3YSZ). In situ x-ray diffraction is used to determine sample temperature. Sintering contribution to σ is excluded by investigating the flash event on a dense ceramic. We show that total conductivity follows an Arrhenius-like equation in both dense and green samples, even during Stage II of flash. The non-linearity often verified during flash sintering of 3YSZ is therefore related to the furnace temperature instead of the sample temperature when building the ln(σ) vs. 1/T plots. Furthermore, we verified a change in the activation energy for conduction prior to the ignition of the flash event and discussed the possible mechanisms. For instance, the decrease in activation energy from Stage I to II in the dense sample is attributed to a contribution from electronic carriers.

Congratulations, João! It is a well-deserved award!