A study on the kinetic process of reaction synthesis of TiC: Part I. Experimental research and theoretical model

Abstract

The micromechanism and the macrokinetic process of synthesis TiC in preparing Al/TiC by direct reaction synthesis (DRS) have been investigated in detail by observing the microstructure of the water-quenched preform by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy* dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. The results have shown that the micromechanism of reaction is a solution-precipitation mechanism, in which carbon powders in the preform were surrounded by a Ti-rich Al-Ti-C melt layer and reacted with titanium in the layer to synthesize TiC particles, and TiC precipitated from the layer and scattered over the alloy melt. The macrokinetic model of reaction synthesis of TiC can be divided into four stages: heating and melting stage, initial reaction stage, complete reaction stage, and cooling stage. In the end, a macrokinetic model has been set up based on the experimental results.