Crack Healing Technique of Polycrystalline Ceramics using Electrical Field/Current Treatment

Ceramic materials are very useful functional and structural materials that can be utilized even in harsh environments, but their application field is relatively limited due to its brittle nature and resultant lower reliability. One of the main reasons is that microscopic cracks and damages, which were introduced during machining processing or usage, act as fracture sources, leading to a rapid degradation of their mechanical properties. If those damages causing the degradation could be healed, it would enable to provide not only highly reliable ceramic components but also new material recycling processes aiming re-use of limited material resources. This article reports on a crack healing method of ceramics by employing a strong electric field/current. Using the electric field/current technique, we successfully demonstrated not only the crack healing in the material from microstructural point of view but also recovery of the mechanical properties more than its initial state.