Study of carbide composites processed by spark plasma sintering for Gen IV reactors

Abstract

Abstract The variant of TiC/SiC interfaces was successfully fabricated by SiC powder (P) and lump SiC (L) by spark plasma sintering (SPS) at 1800 °C. There were no chemical reactions between SiC and TiC at that temperature. The larger TiC/SiC interfaces can be created by lump SiC. In contrast, the uniform distribution of TiC/SiC was found when using SiC powders. A network of micro-pores still appeared in both TiC with 30 % SiC and TiC with 50 % SiC composites, stress fields developed at the interface between TiC and SiC grains due to their differences in thermal expansion coefficients, confirmed by the peak shift about 2 cm-1 from Raman peak of 969 cm-1. Thermal diffusion of TiC/SiC composites was significantly higher than TiC monolith and varied regard to SiC contents.