Effect of Sintering Additives on Fabrication Properties of Liquid Phase Sintered SiC

SiC has been extensively studied for high temperature components in advanced energy system and gas turbine because of its excellent high temperature mechanical properties and good thermal-chemical stability etc. However, the brittle characteristics of SiC such as low fracture toughness and low strain-to fracture still impose a severe limitation on practical applications of SiC materials. For these reasons, SiCf/SiC composites can be considered as a promising for various structural materials, because of their good fracture toughness compared with monolithic SiC. But, high temperature and pressure lead to the degradation of the reinforcing fiber during the hot pressing. Therefore, reduction of sintering temperature and pressure is key requirements for the fabrication of SiCf/SiC composites by hot pressing method. In the present work, monolithic Liquid Phase Sintered SiC (LPS-SiC) was fabricated by hot pressing method in Ar atmosphere at 1800oC under 20MPa using Al2O3, Y2O3 and SiO2 as sintering additives. The starting powder was high purity β-SiC nano-powder with an average particle size of 30nm. The characterization of LPS-SiC was investigated by means of SEM and three point bending test. Base on the composition of sintering additives-, microstructure- and mechanical property correlation, the compositions of sintering additives are discussed.