Effect of the Si-C Powder Prepared by Mechanical Alloying on the Densification of Silicon Carbide Powder

Abstract

High purity Si-C (99.999%) powder prepared by mechanical alloying was added to a commercial SiC powder as a sintering additive. Reaction bonded silicon carbide balls and jars with high purity (99.98%) were used for the mechanical alloying. As a result, the purity of the sintered Si-C was higher than 99.99%. When sintered at 2200°C under 50 MPa pressure for 1 h, SiC containing 10 wt% of high purity Si-C showed a relative density of 95.3%, similar to the relative density of commercial SiC (95%). However, the relative density of SiC decreased to 90.6% without the additive when the applied pressure decreased to 40 MPa. In contrast, the relative density was nearly unaffected by the decrease of the pressure when using the Si-C additive. Therefore, the addition of Si-C powder promoted the densification of SiC above 2000°C under 40 MPa pressure. Key words: Nanoparticulates, Silicon carbide, Solid state sintering, Powders