Technical ceramics play an essential role in various industries. Two of the most frequently utilized types are alumina and silicon carbide; both possess unique properties that make them great candidates for specific uses.
Alumina wear-resistant ceramics offer high thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance and hardness; silicon carbide stands out due to its extreme hardness and excellent wear resistance up to 1400 degrees Celsius without losing strength or degrading in strength.
Hardness
Silicon carbide is an outstanding non-oxide engineering ceramic with impressive mechanical properties, including strength, toughness and thermal conductivity. These qualities make silicon carbide ideal for applications where hardness is an essential factor, such as manufacturing brake pads in consumer automobiles.
Silicon carbide stands out among hard materials with a rating of 9.5 on Mohs’ scale of hardness. This makes it one of the hardest materials around and means it can withstand abuse from heavy machines and environments while withstanding abrasion, frictional wear, corrosion resistance and wear-and-tear wear. Furthermore, silicon carbide’s corrosion-resistance makes it popular choice in chemical plants and mills.
Silicon carbide’s hardness is determined by both its crystal structure and purity, including both cubic and hexagonal crystal structures, with hexagonal ones being more hard wearing due to tighter arrangement and stronger atomic bonding. Sintering degree also plays an integral role in this matter – higher temperatures increase grain growth for greater material density, leading to harder surface areas.
Silicon carbide ceramics stand alone when it comes to their performance at high temperatures, being able to maintain strength up to 1400degC while its low coefficient of expansion provides exceptional resilience against temperature fluctuations – perfect for environments characterized by frequent heating/cooling cycles.
Thermal Conductivity
Silicon carbide ceramics are versatile nonoxide ceramic materials used in various thermally and mechanically demanding applications, including those requiring hardness, wear resistance, thermal conductivity and low expansion coefficient. Silicon carbide finds use as hard abrasives with good hardness/wear resistance properties; engineering ceramics for their thermal conductivity/low expansion coefficient combination; and refractories as strength/corrosion resistance at elevated temperatures.
As it serves as an electrical insulator, silicone can also play an essential role in electronics and other high-tech devices. Furthermore, its properties can even allow it to act as a semiconductor in certain conditions – further expanding its uses and applications.
Silicon carbide’s chemical inertness allows it to withstand exposure to most chemicals at high temperatures, making it a suitable material for components that must withstand harsh environments.
Plastic can maintain its integrity at temperatures as hot as 1400 degrees Celsius – nearly twice the melting point of steel! In addition, its superior high-temperature strength and flexural resistance enable it to keep working at these extreme temperatures, keeping its integrity even under wear conditions such as mechanical seal applications or demanding tribological applications such as corrosion. Furthermore, its lower density compared to metal permits lightweight products to be produced.
Electrical Properties
Silicon carbide boasts high strength and hardness (9.5 on the Mohs scale) as well as good wear resistance, making it an invaluable industrial material. Furthermore, its excellent thermal conductivity, low expansion rates, corrosion-resistance capabilities and thermal conductivity all combine to make this material highly sought-after in many industrial settings.
Solid-phase sintered silicon carbide can withstand temperatures of up to 1400 degrees Celsius without losing strength, making it an invaluable component for use in refractory applications. Components made from solid-phase sintered silicon carbide such as burner nozzles, jet and flame tubes made of this material can withstand the most aggressive abrasion conditions while remaining temperature resistant; its excellent corrosion and oxidation resistance makes it suitable for use in flue gas desulphurisation plants.
Silicon carbide ceramics are among the hardest and lightest technical ceramics, boasting very low densities. Their mechanical properties far outshone those of alumina ceramics, making silicon carbide an excellent material for applications requiring wear resistance or high temperature resistance, such as high-performance electronics. Moissanite crystals may occur naturally in certain meteorites; however, most silicon carbide used in electronics is synthetically made – used as capacitors, resistors, and diodes.
Cost
Ceramics present a host of factors that impact what materials are chosen for various applications, and understanding their unique properties enables engineers and manufacturers to make well-informed decisions that meet industry demands. Silicon carbide and alumina are two widely-used ceramic materials; both offer their own set of benefits.
SiC is frequently chosen due to its exceptional hardness, making it more resistant to abrasive conditions and providing extended wear life. Furthermore, SiC offers superior chemical resistance and dimensional stability than tungsten carbide (WC) under similar conditions.
WC can be made more corrosion-resistant by adding chromium or molybdenum alloys, but this increases its cost significantly. Therefore, for heavy slurry applications with extreme pumping conditions it may be preferable to choose an anticorrosion ceramic such as RB SiC instead.
Solid-phase sintered silicon carbide ceramic is one of the most corrosion-resistant fine ceramics, maintaining strength up to 1400degC. Due to this property, it’s used in mechanical seals and pump parts as well as semiconductor processing equipment and general industrial machine components. Solid-phase sintered silicon carbide also makes an excellent choice for refractory applications like burner nozzles in combustion rooms or flue gas desulphurisation plants – its excellent resistance to oxidation and corrosion make it suitable for high temperature use as are its excellent abrasion/wear resistance properties.