Effect of spark plasma sintering parameters on microstructure and room-temperature hardness and toughness of fine-grained boron carbide (B4C)

Enhancing the spark-plasma sinterability of B4C nanopowders via room-temperature methylation induced purification

“…Boron carbide (B 4 C) ceramics, and their composites with other ceramics, have recently been receiving considerable attention within the engineering ceramics community [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], especially for their use in structural applications requiring ultrahigh hardness and lightness. The most popular of these applications is perhaps that of ceramic armours for ballistic protection of both personnel and vehicles, but there are others such as wear parts and tribocomponents, and nuclear radiation shields.…”

“…This undesirable combination of factors becomes especially critical if the goal pursued is to fabricate dense, ultrafine-grained or nanograined B 4 C ceramics from nanopowders. Of the two causes (i.e., the high covalence and the oxidic impurities), the former, which is an intrinsic factor, has been mitigated using spark-plasma sintering (SPS) [8,11,[17][18][19]. The latter, which is an extrinsic factor, can be circumvented by purifying the powders in some manner.…”

Effects of ZrB2 contents on the mechanical properties and thermal shock resistance of B4C–ZrB2 ceramics

“…Despite of attractive application properties of B 4 C, its applicability mainly limits to its poor sinterability [6,7] and low fracture toughness [8,9]. The poor sinterability of B 4 C is mainly due to the strong covalent bonding and low self-diffusion coefficient.…”

Selective laser melting of boron carbide particles coated by a cobalt-based metal layer

“…This value is slightly less than that of the cobalt-based particle coating obtained before SLM (∼700 HV). Microhardness of the boron carbide grains in the sample was in the range of 2900-3200 HV that is comparable to the hardness of SLM boron carbide parts (Moshtaghioun et al, 2013).…”