High pressure sintering of TiB2 ceramics at different temperatures

Abstract

In this paper the effect of high-pressure sintering (HPS) temperature on the microstructure, physical and mechanical properties of TiB2 ceramics has been investigated. Initial TiB2 powder with the average particle size of 5 ?m was sintered in a modified high-pressure anvil-type apparatus under static pressure of 4 GPa in the temperature range of 1400-1800?C. It is shown that HPS allows preparing full-dense TiB2 ceramics with fine-grained structure. The density of samples rises with increasing the sintering temperature up to 1800?C while the maximal microhardness is observed on samples prepared in the temperature range of 1500-1600?C. XRD analysis has shown that this fact is connected with an increase of the level of internal stresses in these samples.