Dear Colleagues and Friends,
we are very pleased to inform you that after Avignon 2008, Capbreton 2011 and Toulouse 2014, the fourth edition of the International Workshop on SPS will be held from 23 to 25 May 2018 in Cagliari (Italy).

The Workshop and a book of selected chapters will be dedicated to our SPS mentor, Professor Zuhair A. Munir. Specific details on this matter will be provided during the Workshop.

Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) is a technology developed in Japan by K. Inoue (1966). Since that time, SPS has been widely used in Japan at an industrial scale. In other countries, the tendency is still to investigate it at a laboratory level, even though some industrial applications are now in the air.
Despite evidences for existence of unusual phenomena occurring during sintering process using pulsed current, most of the knowledge is still empirical. To enhance SPS potentialities as well as efficiency, theoretical investigations are needed.

The purpose of this International Workshop is to give some breakthroughs regarding densification mechanisms, current path, temperature gradients and mould nature / design influence, whatever is the powder bed (conductive or insulating).

Fabrication of novel materials, assembling of dissimilar materials and functionally graded materials are also concerned.