The high solubility of chloride sal

The high solubility of chloride salts means that the precise concentration of the starting solution can be much higher in molarity than the hydroxide route. Starting with an aqueous solution means that the SrCl2 will be homogenously distributed around each particle of SrTiO3, irrespective of size. This opens the door for a greatly increased range of materials which can be cold sintered, as not all materials can be easily made or obtained as nanoparticles; this method can be used with solid state powders. Previous work has been entirely dependent on a nanoparticulate starting powder, which are oen expensive, difficult to obtain, or unscalable, something which becomes particularly prominent when considering fractionally doped compositions (e.g. the n-type thermoelectric material La0.1-Sr0.83Dy0.07TiO3) 23 which cannot be easily obtained commercially on the nanoscale or otherwise. This is due to the mechanism by which the amorphous in-lling phase is recrystallized (TLK growth) which requires pristine surfaces upon which solute ions can deposit. In intermediate phase reactive CS, the infilling phase is reacting with itself rather than the starting powder, so the requirement for a pristine crystal surface is removed. This makes the process applicable across a much wider range of powder compositions and sizes, and also gives the opportunity to make multiphase materials, which would be inaccessible using TLK-based CS.