Production of porous TiC preform by the gel casting process in order to synthesize Ti3SiC2 MAX phase via infiltration of preform

The ternary compound Ti3SiC2 is a representative of materials that exhibit both metals and ceramics characteristics. Similar to metals, this compound is electrical and thermal conductive material, not susceptible to thermal shock and shows plastic properties at high temperature. When considering as a ceramic, it is elastically rigid, lightweight, creep and fatigue resistant and maintains their strengths to high temperatures. In this paper, T3SiC2 bulks have been synthesized by infiltrating Si liquid into porous TiC preforms. High-purity TiC and Si powders with molar ratios of 3TiC:(1 x)Si (where x = 0.30, 0.50, 1.00) were used as starting powders. Silicon pellets were placed at the top of the precursor pellets as a liquid source. The phase formation and microstructure were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) system. The results demonstrated that the 50 percent extra silicon results to formation of Ti3SiC2 with 92 wt.% purity. The conditions are favorable for the formation of the SiC secondary phase with increasing the amount of extra silicon to 100 percent. Also, an increase in the amount of extra silicon leads to the formation of Ti3SiC2 with the columnar morphology.