Despite its scientific and technolo

Despite its scientific and technological importance, the fundamental understanding of cold sintering kinetics and densification mechanisms are still in the very early stages of investigation. Analogous to conventional sintering kinetics studies, ZnO is often employed as a model material system for the cold sintering. Its initial sintering potential was first reported in 2015, and to date, a combined computational and experimental investigation showed that surface hydroxylation accelerates the dissolved Zn cation adsorption and enhances the diffusion during the cold sintering. Using the grain size based sintering kinetics analysis, the apparent activation energy of ZnO grain growth was only 20% of the value observed in solid state sintering. Moreover, Kelvin probe force microscopy method showed that the transient liquid accounts for generating highly defective grain boundaries, leading to reduction of the activation energy of the atomic diffusion.