Fabrication of Iron Carbide and Nitride Ceramics with Controlled Magnetic Properties by the Non-Oxide Sol-Gel Process

Abstract

The carbodiimide-based non-oxide sol-gel process is a novel route to non-oxide nitride and carbide ceramics. This process has been applied to fabricate ternary or binary silicon based nitride and carbide ceramics. Based on this non-oxide sol-gel process, iron carbide and nitride have been fabricated by reaction of iron trichloride with bis(trimethylsilyl)carbodiimide to form FeCN gel followed by pyrolysis in argon flow at different temperatures. The iron carbide material obtained at 700 °C exhibits hard ferromagnetic properties whereas α-iron along with iron nitride formed at 1300 °C shows soft ferromagnetic properties. Therefore, iron carbide and nitride ceramics with controlled magnetic properties can be obtained along this novel non-oxygen sol-gel process by controlled pyrolysis. The pyrolysis behavior was investigated based on thermal gravimetric analysis coupled with differential scanning calorimetry. The phase structures of the iron carbide and nitride are identified by X-ray diffraction and the magnetic properties of the materials are measured by magnetometer.