Too good to be true? Low temperature sintering

Interesting experiments, I believe the video got the purpose of the cornstarch wrong however and by conducting the experiment in a slightly different way may produce a better end product.

When refining materials such as metals the cornstarch's main purpose is to provide a medium to collect the excess oxygen driven off the materials from heating through the burning of the starch which from my understanding tends to more readily bind with oxygen and prevent it from binding with the target materials. Likewise the borate is used to produce a glass like top layer to prevent atmospheric oxygen from entering the mold during the melting process. I believe a higher temperature is required and that makes the paper TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, however a less homogenized mixture with stratified layers of borax above and silicon carbide below while constrained within a canister or cone mold and firing at the higher temperature of 1000C as the video creator claims he did experiment with in the end, would produce a much better result .

It may even be possible to envelope the object in an inert gas when firing and eliminate the borax all together.

Link to the Paper discussed? https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21870764.2019.17...

The pinned comment on the video appears to be from the author of the original paper.