Polycarbosilazane passivation on graphite foil used as gasket seal

Abstract

Gasket seals are often used in industry and laboratories where a leak-proof installation is needed in order to avoid loss of products or dangerous materials. Many of products transported inside tubes are at relatively high temperatures excluding polymeric gaskets. In the same line, many of transported materials contain solvents which can attack polymer sealings, therefore limiting their use. An alternative is to use graphite joints as sealings. These joints are a sandwich of graphite foil and stainless steel mesh as forming core. The problem that raises using graphite in contact with steel is that at temperatures of about 500 °C an interdiffusion of carbon on the steel structure occurs which produces adhesion of the graphite gasket on the metallic flange. Therefore this adhesion increases the time to change each gasket, since rests of previously adhered graphite has to be removed from the flange. In order to avoid the adhesion of the graphite on the flange, polycarbosilazane precursor was used as protective finishing on the graphite foil surface. After thermal transformation of the polymer into the corresponding PDC finishing, it acts in two manners: It avoids the direct contact between the carbon and the steel and it allows the sealing of liquids and gases. Adhesion tests were done and showed that the foils passivated with PDCs did not adhere to the steel flange. Moreover, the production methods and products are compatible to industrial environment and processes. The results found here show that the time to change the gasket in industry can be clearly reduced by using the PDC finishing on graphite gasket.