Abstract
Carbides of Groups IVb, Vb, and VIb metals have high melting point, high hardness, and good electrical conductivity as well as good thermionic emissivity. Moreover, they exhibit high mechanical strength at elevated temperatures.
Among these, ZrC, HfC, TaC and their solid solutions are important as high temperature materials because of their high melting points. But, since they have poor sinterability, few precise details are known about the powdered mixture or solid solution. This study, in a series of studies on TaC base materials for incandescent filaments, is aimed at development of sintered materials resistant against thermal shock.
In this report the sintering properties in the binary system TaC-ZrC were studied by using a vacuum hot-pressing apparatus, since it was considered that the acceleration of the densification seems to control the properties, especially the mechanical properties of the sintered material.
