Note that the dried gel which forms

Note that the dried gel which forms the bonding phase in ICC might have properties and composition differing from the starting powders. The drying process carried out at room temperature might not allow complete removal of the chemically bound water. This has been observed for instance in ICCed SiO2, where the interphase contains chemically bound water as confirmed by NMR and FT-IR signals[26]. Therefore, the physical and chemical properties of the obtained gel might be substantially different from those of the parent material. If a complete drying is carried out at a temperature sufficient to remove any residual water, the gel density is expected to increase significantly making it more challenging to obtain complete densification (rg increases and u decreases to 0 in Eq. (8)).