Driving Force for Sintering of Particles with Anisotropic Surface Energies

Crystalline aggregates at constant temperature and pressure are unstable toward shape changes for which , where δG is a dzgerential change in the Gibbs free energy, σ i A i is the free energy of surface or interface i, and γ i h i is the free energy of edge, ledge, or dislocation defect i. The expression reduces to the familiar expression for the driving force for early‐stage sintering. Line defects play central roles in driving the sintering of crystalline solids.