Silicon carbide (SiC) is an inorganic ceramic material known for its superior thermal and mechanical properties, making it popularly employed in applications requiring both hardness and thermal expansion stability at high temperatures, such as wear-resistant parts for abrasives or wear-resistent systems or electrical products requiring low thermal expansion coefficient.
SiC is known to withstand acid and alkali mixtures – essential qualities in any bulletproof armor material. Discover more of its physical and chemical properties below.
Hardness
Silicon carbide’s exceptional hardness makes it a prime material choice for components subjected to intense mechanical stress and pressure, helping prevent deformation under these circumstances and preserve structural integrity of components.
Our black-grey SiC ceramic’s ballistic protection properties make it particularly suitable for ballistic protection applications, as it withstands impact without the need for heavy armouring materials; our black-grey ceramic offers comparable levels of protection at a fraction of its weight compared to steel products.
Silicon carbide is one of the hardest materials on Earth, as evidenced by its Mohs hardness rating of 13. It trails only diamond and boron carbide when it comes to hardness; its hardness allows it to resist wear and abrasion while providing efficient cutting of metals.
Doping, alloying and surface treatment techniques can all enhance the hardness of silicon carbide ceramics to increase their hardness. Doping techniques include solid solution doping and ion implantation while surface treatment includes coating or plating techniques – these help reduce wear, improve lubrication and corrosion resistance to extend their lifetime and suit specific application needs.
Thermal Conductivity
Silicon carbide is an exceptionally durable material with impressive mechanical properties. These include its impressive fracture toughness of 6.8 MPa m0.5 which ranks it second only to diamond and cubic boron nitride among hard materials, as well as its impressive 490 GPa flexural strength which shows its ability to resist deformation under stress while maintaining its shape.
These strong mechanical properties are enhanced by ceramic’s thermal conductivity of 120 W/m*K, which enables easy heat transfer from hot surfaces to cold ones and vice versa. Furthermore, its low coefficient of thermal expansion minimizes dimensional changes during temperature fluctuations.
Silicon carbide’s unique physical, thermal and chemical properties make it an ideal refractory ceramic material. Silicon carbide components resist corrosion, abrasion and erosion in harsh environments – such as gas sealing rings, mechanical seals or bearing parts required to withstand chemicals or steam at high temperatures. Saint-Gobain provides various sintered and reaction bonded SSiC variants under their Hexoloy brand that meet these challenges well.
Low Thermal Expansion
Silicon carbide ceramics boast low thermal expansion compared to non-oxide ceramics, which enables it to withstand extremely hot environments without losing integrity.
Silicon carbide is a perfect material for mechanical seals and bearings in automotive industry and industrial machinery, as well as highly corrosion-resistant in the presence of salty brine or acidic compounds.
Silicon carbide is an extremely hard material, as evidenced by its new Mohs hardness scale rating of 13. It ranks second only to diamond and cubic boron nitride on this scale; its unique tetrahedral structure of carbon and silicon atoms closely bound within crystal lattice bonds contributes to its great strength. Silicon carbide’s combination of mechanical strength and chemical corrosion resistance enables it to withstand extreme conditions, including thermal shocks. As such, this material has become essential in industries like aerospace and automobile production. Silicon carbide’s strength against deformation under pressure makes it an ideal material for gas turbine and rocket engine components, including nozzles. Silicon carbide also serves an integral function in petrochemical refineries, aerospace production lines, 3D printing processes, ballistics manufacturing, paper production facilities and energy technology technology applications.
Resistance to Acids and Lyes
Silicon carbide’s lightness, extreme hardness, rigidity and thermal conductivity make it an excellent material choice for applications requiring it to withstand harsh environments and conditions, such as making mirrors for astronomical telescopes or mechanical seals and pump parts which must withstand corrosion, abrasion fatigue and erosion resistance. It has even been used as a mirror material on starships!
Silicon carbide maintains its strength at temperatures up to 1400degC without losing its mechanical properties, boasting superior high-temperature mechanical properties of any known material. A non-oxide ceramic, silicon carbide is known for having exceptional high temperature mechanical properties as well as being highly abrasion and corrosion-resistant with the capacity of withstanding 5-times more abrasion than steel.
SiC with metallic silicon content can withstand both acids and lyes, while also being infiltrated with molten metal during manufacturing of high-temperature components like burner nozzles and jet tubes. This method increases durability while permitting creation of unique shapes that would be difficult to produce using powder sintering technology alone. Infiltration processes may be conducted either hot or cold spray with coating options including metals and polymers available.
Stability
Silicon carbide ceramics possess exceptional high-temperature stability, maintaining strength and stiffness at temperatures up to 1600 degC without plastic deformation or softening. Furthermore, their corrosion resistance to both acidic and alkaline chemicals make silicon carbide ceramics a popular material choice when producing abrasives and wear-resistant agents.
Silicon carbide ceramics boast an extremely low thermal expansion coefficient that results in minimal signal attenuation over long distance optical fiber transmission, making them the perfect material choice for use in sensors and lasers.
Silicon carbide (SiC) is an extremely strong nonoxide ceramic material with outstanding mechanical and chemical properties for end-use applications, often serving as an excellent combination of mechanical and chemical properties. Common applications for SiC include abrasives, wear-resistant additives and refractories; its corrosion-resistance makes it suitable for mechanical seals and pump components as well as bulletproof plates and rocket nozzles; its large band gap and high breakdown field strength make SiC suitable for electronics industries power supplies.