Abstract
This work was undertaken to improve the strength of the conventional Si3N4 reaction-bonded SiC ceramics, a well known material by their very little size change in sintering stage. Metallic Si (average grain size 0.9μm) and SiC (average grain size 16μm) powders were mixed and molded using thermoplastic resin binder and sintered in the 0.88MPa nitrogen gas atmosphere. The maximum bending strength of 350MPa was obtained for the sintered body containing 60Si-40SiC (in weight) plus 9wt% binder. The size change in sintering was minimized to 0.13% under the above process conditions. Several properties of the newly developed ceramics such as high temperature strength, oxidation resistance and thermal diffusivity, were measured.
