Samples of unalloyed iron were sintered in the presence of an abnormal glow discharge using a confined anode-cathode configuration. The samples were placed on a holder acting as the discharge anode inside an AISI 1020 steel hollow cathode. Heating of the outer cathode was obtained by the bombardment of ions and energetic neutral particles. As a consequence of the confined geometry, the sample was efficiently heated mainly by radiation from the cathode. In order to evaluate the results of the sintering process by plasma, samples of unalloyed iron were also sintered in a resistive furnace using the same thermal cycle. The porosity, dimension and morphology of the pores were characterized by means of four basic parameters: area fraction, mean diameter, shape factor and elongation factor. The results show that the shape factor depends on the pore size, a characteristic that was not observed for elongation factor. For samples sintered in plasma reactor or conventional furnace, no significant difference in the porosity or in the pores morphology was observed.
powder metallurgy; plasma sintering; furnace sintering; porosity; pores morphology
