Silicon carbide is an exceptional material for handling corrosion, abrasion and erosion. Thanks to its low density, high mechanical strength and chemical stability properties, silicon carbide makes an excellent choice in harsh operating environments.
Reaction bonding is one of the primary methods for producing silicon carbide ceramics. This process entails mixing coarse silicon carbide powder, silicon metal and plasticizers together into desired shapes for production.
High Strength
Silicon carbide is one of the lightest and hardest ceramic materials. Additionally, it is one of the most chemically stable options. Resistant to acids and lyes as well as corrosion and high temperatures, silicon carbide has an extremely durable Young’s modulus of 400GPa making it an extremely versatile material suited for 3D printing, ballistics, energy production and paper manufacturing environments.
IPS Ceramics provides sintered silicon carbide (SSiC) components in the form of rods, tubes, discs and custom engineered parts to meet specific customer needs. Our range of kiln furniture including batts, setters, tubes and saggars ensures we can meet your firing or sintering application’s specific specifications.
Hexoloy(r) SiC ceramic by Saint-Gobain Performance Ceramics & Refractories is an engineered non-oxide silicon carbide material designed to outshone other popular materials in demanding applications. Available both sintered and reaction bonded formats, Hexoloy uses high purity nano grade powder which is sintered at higher temperatures (2100-2200degC causing shape shrinkage of up to 20% while micron-sized powder reaction bonded pieces require lower sintering temperatures (1450-1600degC). Both types are suitable for various demanding applications.
High Temperature Resistance
Silicon carbide ceramics are an ideal choice for demanding conditions in 3D printing, ballistics, refractories, energy technology and paper manufacturing. Furthermore, their hard armour ballistic applications provide greater protection at reduced weight than comparable steel or aluminium-oxide materials.
Silicon carbide, typically formed from an electro-chemical reaction between sand and carbon in a hot furnace, has been used as an abrasive material for more than 100 years. As it stands up well against extreme temperatures and wear-and-tear damage.
Refractory ceramics such as zirconia make the material an ideal choice for demanding industrial environments such as chemical and gas production, thermal shock resistance, heat endurance and resistance to corrosion and oxidation. Therefore, it is often utilized in burner nozzles, jet and flame tubes fabricated out of it.
Silicon carbide is widely utilized as a structural ceramic for its high temperature resistance and wear resistance, including wear on heat resistant plates, discs, sheets and rings. As an inert ceramic that does not dissolve in water, alcohol or acid it offers resistance against many environmental conditions that would degrade less resilient materials – various grades of porous and dense silicon carbide may be available depending on your application requirements.
Corrosion Resistance
Silicon carbide ceramics offer outstanding chemical resistance across a range of acidic and basic environments, as well as exceptional oxidation resistance at high temperatures, low neutron activity and good radiation damage tolerance – characteristics which make them an invaluable engineering ceramic, useful in industries including petrochemical, paper-making, laser and microelectronics applications.
Mechanical properties of corroded ceramics are determined by flaw population and size. Passive oxidation may help heal surface cracks and increase average flexural strength of material while active oxidation may create additional surface flaws which reduce overall strength. To achieve acceptable corrosion stability it is vital that material processing and composition be designed accordingly.
Silicon carbide ceramics not only boast superior chemical resistance, but they also possess outstanding mechanical properties and hardness, making them the ideal material choice for applications requiring high mechanical strength and temperature resistance, such as automotive brake pads.
Ortech offers fully dense, sinterless Silicon Carbide (SiC), which can be formed via casting, dry pressing or isostatic pressing to meet your application needs. We also provide reactively-bonded SiC products which feature reactive bonding with up to 10% metallic silicon retained allowing for lower cost forming methods such as casting and dry pressing while still offering exceptional chemical and mechanical performance.
Wear Resistance
Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramics offer excellent mechanical and corrosion resistance in various environments, with hardness, machinability, thermal stability and chemical resistance making them indispensable in many industrial sectors.
SiC ceramics have found widespread application in automotive engines to replace traditional metal materials in high-temperature components and improve engine efficiency and performance while simultaneously creating lightweight designs. Furthermore, SiC ceramics are used in high performance brake discs to offer improved braking effects and longer service lives.
SiC is an extremely stable material with an operating temperature limit of 1600 degC and low coefficients of expansion and thermal conductivity, making it suitable for demanding applications. Furthermore, SiC boasts good chemical stability; being resistant to most acids, alkalis and salts at various concentrations.
SiC is widely recognized as an ideal material for applications involving abrasion and impact wear, such as cutting tools, grinding wheels and abrasive blasting. Furthermore, SiC can also serve as an invaluable reinforcement agent in metal matrix composites to increase strength and toughness; carbon nanotubes may even be added to enhance toughness further and reduce crack propagation further enhancing damage tolerance and load bearing capacity, while decreasing crack propagation rates further increasing strength overall. This material’s properties include improved toughness coupled with lower crack propagation which leads to better damage tolerance as well as larger load bearing capacities as well as smaller grain sizes which allows greater strength overall in final products produced using SiC than its predecessors – an invaluable combination which could prove essential in other metal matrix composite products made using SiC.