Reactive Sintering of HfB2-SiC-C Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics with Enhanced Thermal Shock Resistance

Authors A. Ovcharenko, V. Dibrov, M. Semenko
Affiliations

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 01601 Kyiv, Ukraine

Е-mail terra.2016knu@gmail.com
Issue Volume 16, Year 2024, Number 6
Dates Received 15 October 2024; revised manuscript received 20 December 2024; published online 23 December 2024
Citation A. Ovcharenko, V. Dibrov, M. Semenko, J. Nano- Electron. Phys. 16 No 6, 06024 (2024)
DOI https://doi.org/10.21272/jnep.16(6).06024
PACS Number(s) 81.05.Je, 81.05.Mh
Keywords Ultra-high temperature ceramics, Reactive sintering, Hafnium diboride, Thermal shock resistance, XRD (95) , SEM (117) .
Annotation

The fabrication of ultra-high-temperature ceramics using the sintering method requires maintaining high temperatures of around 1500 °C for several hours. In contrast, this study demonstrated an alternative method for uniform formation of the corresponding microphases, which could reduce production costs in the future. The essence of the reactive hot pressing method lies in initiating a chemical reaction at an adiabatic temperature, which constitutes 60-80 % of the precursors' melting temperature, with the application of external pressure. The combination of these conditions significantly accelerates the densification process of the powder batch. The HfB2-SiC-C heteromodulus ceramics with different content of carbon platelets were manufactured via the reactive hot pressing of HfC-B4C-Si precursors at 1850 °C and 30 MPa for 4 minutes. Thus, the microhardness of the synthesized ceramics with specific chemical compositions reached 17.3 GPa, while the fracture toughness was 6.9 MPa/m2. The reactively pressed materials were compared to non-reactively pressed ones with the same compositions. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) have been used for the composite characterization. Carbon inclusions were shown affecting the HfB2-SiC hardness while improving thermal shock resistance. The stratification of reactively pressed materials has been identified with silicon-depleted inner areas of the samples.

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