Production of Ti3SiC2 Nanolayered Ceramic

The nanolayered ternary compound Ti3SiC2 is a representative of those materials that exhibit the characteristics of both metals and ceramics. Similar to metals, Ti3SiC2 shows high electrical and thermal conductivity, high thermal shock resistance, ductility and good machinability. Further, similar to a ceramic, Ti3SiC2 has a high Young’s modulus, as well as, high temperature strength and oxidation resistance. In this paper, T3SiC2 bulks have been synthesized by infiltrating Si liquid into a porous preform composed of solid TiC powders. Silicon pellets were placed on the top of the precursor pellets as the liquid source. The starting compositions can be represented by the formula 3TiC/1.3Si. The phase formation and microstructure were investigated by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an energydispersive spectroscopy (EDS) system. The results demonstrated that the TiC preform could react with Si in order to MAX phase synthesis and SiC impurities appeared in the cross section of the samples. It is found that the compositions of the samples strongly depended on the time of infiltration. Moreover, an increase in the time, decomposed Ti3SiC2 into TiC compound.