Fabrication of high-purity ternary carbide Ti₃AlC₂ by spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique

Abstract

The effect of silicon on synthesis of Ti₃AlC₂ by spark plasma sintering (SPS) from TiC/Ti/Al powders was investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used for phase identification and microstructure evaluation. The results show that addition of silicon can considerably accelerate the synthesis reaction of Ti₃AlC₂ and fully dense, essentially single-phase (purity >98%) polycrystalline Ti₃AlC₂ could be successfully obtained by sintering 2TiC/1Ti/1Al/0.2Si powders at 1 200–1 250 °C under a pressure of 30 MPa. SEM photographs show that the obtained Ti₃AlC₂ samples from mixtures powders are in plane-shape with a size of about 2–5 μm and 10–25 μm in the thickness dimension and elongated dimension, respectively.

Keywords

Ti₃AlC₂ / ceramics / carbides / microstructure / layered structures

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