Review on Recent Advancements in Severe Plastic Deformation of Oxides by High-Pressure Torsion (HPT)

Severe plastic deformation (SPD) of oxides has been of interest in mineralogy and geology for many decades, but oxides have ionic or covalent bonds with brittle nature and can hardly be deformed at ambient temperature. SPD processing of oxides is first realized in 1930s, when Percy W. Bridgman introduce the principles of high-pressure torsion (HPT) method. Although the method is widely used nowadays to produce ultrafine-grained (UFG) metals, the application of method for SPD processing of oxides is quite limited. This article reviews some of the recent publications on the application of HPT method to oxide ceramics (Al2O3, ZrO2, TiO2, Y2O3, ZnO, and BaTiO3) and summarizes their major findings: powder compaction and partial consolidation, nanograin formation, formation of different kinds of lattice defects such as dislocations and oxygen vacancies, strain and grain size dependence of phase transformations, and improvement of functional properties such as bandgap narrowing, photoluminescence, photocatalytic activity, and dielectricity.