Thermal‐driven oxygen vacancy (Von+) defect engineering in AlON powder for enhancing ceramic transparency

Abstract Oxygen defect tuning engineering is an effective method to tailor the properties of ceramic materials. However, persistent difficulties remain in the controllable generation of intrinsic oxygen vacancy defects () in the AlON lattice, and their influence on transparency remains elusive. Here, by regulating the CRN synthesis temperature to implant thermal‐induced intrinsic defects into AlON powder, we report that higher temperature would cause the lattice oxygen to be lost from the AlON crystal, and result in the AlON powder exhibiting a distinct gray color. Besides, through an analysis of the sintering kinetics in ceramics fabrication, AlON ceramics prepared from powder with more defects show a high transmittance up to 82%, while the counterpart ceramic only achieves a transmittance of 76%. The study of intrinsic defects on ceramics transparency in this work provides a reference approach for fabricating AlON transparent ceramic.