Abstract
Aluminum nitride (AlN) has excellent properties such as high thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity, whereas it has some disadvantages such as low sinterability and tendency to be hydrolyzed by moisture at room temperature. In the present work, the relative density, modulus of rupture and microhardness were examined for pressure-less-sintered AlN (synthetic and commercial) bodies which were prepared under the conditions of various sintering temperatures, holding times and additions of CaCO3 which showed the best effect on sinterability among the various sintering aids. As a result, the AlN bodies with 1.0 wt% CaCO3 (0.56wt% CaO) which were sintered at 1800$^{\circ}C$ for 20 min showed good densification. In this case, the relative densities were 95.9% and 95.2%, and microhardnesses were 10.3 GPa and 9.8 GPa for synthetic and commercial AlN respectively. And as the holding time at 1800$^{\circ}C$ was increased from 10 min to 60 min, the relative density was increased from 91.9% to 96.5%. It was considered that impurities of metals and oxygen promoted the densification of AlN at low temperature (1600$^{\circ}C$).