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

Abstract

The effect of silicon on synthesis of Ti 3 AlC 2 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 Ti 3 AlC 2 and fully dense, essentially single-phase (purity >98%) polycrystalline Ti 3 AlC 2 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 Ti 3 AlC 2 samples from mixtures powders are in plane-shape with a size of about 2-5 m and 10-25 m in the thickness dimension and elongated dimension, respectively.