It was demonstrated that synthesis of oxide materials in a solar furnace in oxidizing environment has a number of advantages compared to conventional techniques such as electric arc, plasma heating, high frequency electric heating, electron beam heating. The main advantages are the absence of special requirements for materials to be melted, the possibility to reach high purity of the melt and providing desired crystalline structure. Solar furnace is an ecologically clean and sterile high temperature source, which can deliver energy to material at very high heating rates (up to 300 K/sec.), provides melting of almost all high temperature oxide materials, allows easy access to the melt which gives the possibility to quench the melt with a speed up to 106 K/sec., obtain materials in a metastable state and fix high-temperature phases. It was shown, that the solar furnace is an appropriate technological installation for development and investigation of new perspective materials.
Synthesis of Al2TiO5 from the melt in a solar furnace has shown, that the complete reaction takes place and no uninteracted phases remain in the final material. Al2TiO5 possesses very low (close to zero) thermal expansion coefficient and high thermostability. At temperatures exceeding 1000 C it is thermodynamically unstable and has low mechanical properties, which is the main obstacle in applications of this material. By introducing Fe3+ and Mg2+ containing dopants and quenching of the melt, ceramics combining thermodynamical stability with improved mechanical hardness and high thermostability were obtained.
The other material which was synthesized in a solar furnace is glass-ceramics of Li2O-Al2O3-SiO2 system with ZrO2 and HfO2 catalisers. The temperature - time conditions for crystallization were determined and sitalls with the main phase of beta-eucryptite were obtained. These glass-ceramics are of optical quality and show a transmittance 92 - 94 % in the visible region of spectrum.
In the binary system Al2O3 - ZrO2 with additive Y2O3, synthesized in a solar furnace, the compositions rich of Al2O3 and ZrO2 (with 4 mol % Y2O3) were shown to exist, possessing high mechanical strength and wear resistance. These compositions are of interest for applications as abrasive substance and cutting tool.