Materials Science & Engineering
Jon-Paul Maria Group – PSU

Sarah is currently in her fourth year of graduate school and plans to pursue a job in industry after graduation in Spring 2021.

Research:
Sarah’s research interests are in ultra-low temperature processing of ceramics. She is presently studying the cold sintering process, a technique in which moderate pressures and a secondary mass transport phase are employed to enable densification of ceramics at temperatures of 300ºC or below. The focus of Sarah’s work has been on understanding the underlying mechanisms of this process in order to expand its application to a wider variety of materials systems and useful applications. Sarah places an emphasis on improving equipment for in situ analysis and conducting targeted experiments to reveal how densification is proceeding during cold sintering. Ultimately, this allowed her group to introduce an alternative ultra-low temperature densification method that was termed hydroflux-assisted densification (HAD). To develop HAD, they applied flux crystal growth techniques to cold sintering by incorporating inorganic flux-based transport phases, as opposed to the aqueous-based transport phases used in most prior cold sintering work. The HAD approach enabled high densities (>90%) at 300ºC or below in a wider variety of oxides, as well as some ferroelectric materials (BaTiO₃, K_xNa_1-xNbO₃, Bi₂WO₆) and ferromagnetic materials (BaFe₁₂O₁₉).

Expected graduation date: Spring 2021

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