Fabrication and rheological behavior of tape‐casting slurry for ultra‐thin multilayer transparent ceramics

Abstract Disk transparent ceramics with multilayer composite structure serves well as laser gain medium because of its excellent thermal and optical properties. For such a type of material, the preparation of corresponding outstanding slurry is the first yet most essential step, and it may determine the quality of both subsequent green tape and the sintered ceramics. In this work, the tape‐casting slurry with typically pseudoplastic behavior was carefully modulated in the mixture solvent of anhydrous ethanol and ethyl acetate, and its rheological property was systematically investigated using fine‐controlled rotary rheometer. The obtained result reveals 4wt.% fish oil to be the best dispersed agent. With the obtained slurry for tape‐casting followed by lamination and warm isostatic‐pressing, the multilayer ultrathin TCs was successfully fabricated via high‐temperature vacuum sintering technology. The obtained full‐dense microstructure with high optical quality may endow the studied ceramic with great potential for highly efficient solid‐state laser gain medium.