抄録
The purpose of this paper is to investigate in detail the relation between the microstructure and high-temperature hardness for Al2O3/SiC micro-and nanocomposites. Two types of Al2O3/SiC composites were fabricated by hot-pressing the mixtures obtained by a conventional ceramic process. Al2O3/finer-SiC composites showed a peculiar microstructure with nanometer-size SiC particles located inside the matrix Al2O3 grains, yielding “nanocomposite”, whereas Al2O3/2μm-SiC composites had the 2μm-SiC particles dispersed at the grain boundary, yielding “microcomposite”. The addition of SiC was found to be very effective in improving the high-temperature mechanical properties of Al2O3 for both of the above Al2O3/SiC composites. Especially, Al2O3/finer-SiC nanocomposites exhibited a better deformation resistance and anti-creep behavior at high-temperatures.
