Effects of Characteristic of Green Body on the Microstructure and Properties of Reaction Bonded Silicon Carbide

Abstract

In this paper, reaction bonded silicon carbide (RBSC) was prepared by silicon infiltration with silicon carbide and carbon black as raw materials. The effects of the mixing methods with different binders on density of green body were compared. The influences of phenolic resin content, forming pressure, sintering temperature of samples on the performance of green body, mechanical microstructure and properties of RBSC were studied. The result shows that the density of green body by wet-mixing with alcohol-soluble binder (phenolic resin) was much better than semi-dry-mixing with usual water-soluble binders (polyvinyl alcohol and carboxy methyl cellulose sodium). The bending strength of green body prepared with phenolic resin at the content of 12 wt.% reached to the maximum value. The density of RBSC increased generally with phenolic resin content increasing at temperature range from 1550 to 1650 °C. The bending strength of RBSC increased firstly and then decreased with phenolic resin content increasing at a sintering temperature of 1600 °C. The optimum condition for fabricating RBSC was sintering at 1600 °C with 12 wt.% phenolic resin, the density, porosity and bending strength of the obtained RBSC was 3.06 g·cm-3, 0.05% and 370±54 MPa, respectively.