Thermal Evolution of Structural, Dielectric and Surface Morphological Properties of Ball Clay for Ceramic Tiles

摘要

This paper reports a study on optimization of the structural, dielectric and surface morphological properties of ball clay with the application of firing treatment. The grinding treatment was performed using vibro mill for 32 hours followed by annealing in air atmosphere at 110 ℃, 1200 ℃ and 1250 ℃. The XRD analysis revealed that the different crystal phases and changes in clay minerals were observed after grinding and various annealing treatments. The variation of dielectric constant and dielectric loss with frequency and temperature were analyzed and found that behaviour of ground and annealed samples were much better than pure material. The SEM studies show that the grains of pure and annealed ball clay samples were densely packed and increased with thermal annealing. The results revealed that ground and annealed samples were better than pure material and may be used in ceramic tile applications in order to obtain better product reliability.