Fabrication of silicon nitride nanoceramics—Powder preparation and sintering: A review

Abstract

Fine-grained silicon nitride ceramics were investigated mainly for their high-strain-rate plasticity. The preparation and densification of fine silicon nitride powder were reviewed. Commercial sub-micrometer powder was used as raw powder in the ''as-received'' state and then used after being ground and undergoing classification operation. Chemical vapor deposition and plasma processes were used for fabricating nanopowder because a further reduction in grain size caused by grinding had limitations. More recently, nanopowder has also been obtained by high-energy milling. This process in principle is the same as conventional planetary milling. For densification, primarily hot pressing was performed, although a similar process known as spark plasma sintering (SPS) has also recently been used. One of the advantages of SPS is its high heating rate. The high heating rate is advantageous because it reduces sintering time, achieving densification without grain growth. We prepared silicon nitride nanopowder by high-energy milling and then obtained nanoceramics by densifying the nanopowder by SPS. r

Low temperature thermal expansion, high temperature electrical conductivity, and mechanical properties of Nb4AlC3 ceramic synthesized by spark plasma sintering

“…Nearly all the refractory ceramics, including borides, oxides, and nitrides, have been successfully synthesized by the SPS method [38][39][40]. In the previous works about MAX phases, Ti 3 SiC 2 , Ti 3 AlC 2 , Ti 2 AlC, Ti 2 AlN, and Cr 2 AlC fabricated by SPS have been investigated [41][42][43][44][45].…”

Effects of Initial Punch-Die Clearance in Spark Plasma Sintering Process

“…[1][2][3][4] Despite the number of SPS studies and the number of successfully consolidated material systems, the achieved fundamental understanding of SPS phenomena is still unsatisfactory. This translates into practical difficulties such as lack of finding optimum punches/die design, select optimum operating conditions (i.e.…”

Advanced Manufacturing of Hard Ceramics

“…SPS is a powerful tool to produce extremely fine-grained materials not accessible by other processes. The feasibility of SPS processes has been demonstrated for Si 3 N 4 and SiC as well as for alumina (Guillard, 2007;Meng, 2011;Nishimura, 2007).…”