Abstract
Combustion synthesis technology can be advantageously applied to high temperature experiments under microgravity environments (MGE) not only as a direct synthesizing method but also as a chemical oven, because it is possible to get high temperatures more rapidly compared to convention al electric furnaces through its self-propagating reaction without any external energy. Combustion synthesis consists of the processes of reaction propagation and product crystallization. Since the former proceeds rapidly , a MGE for about 10 seconds should be long enough for attaining the synthesizing process. Under such a MGE, the combustion products should be expected to keep the position where they react because any fluctuation caused by heat convection and mass disturbance would not occur, resulting in finely dispersed combustion products.
In this paper , the potential and characteristics of combustion synthesis under MGEs is briefly explained by taking the formation of T iB2- AI- B and Zr02-Al203-Fe composite systems carried out in a free fall (～10 s) and a parabolic flight (～20 s) as an example.
