Reaction bonding for silicon carbide
Silicon carbide (SiC) is an extremely hard blue-black crystalline compound used as an abrasive and as a heat refractory material. SiC is a main semiconductor material which can assist the development of high power and high temperature electronic devices and industrial high temperature sensors. SiC crystals consist of two main polytypes. Only the hexagonal SiC is currently available commercially. The physical and electronic properties of cubic SiC are not very well known, yet it is likely that they could be very advantageous presenting more potential and fewer limitations than that of hexagonal SiC. In light of this, the SOLSIC project has sought to develop bulk cubic SiC crystals to advance cubic SiC properties. In addition to this, the purity of the reaction bonding technique was improved. This was necessary since the traditional processing technique used relied on sintering aids. These inevitably introduce impurities that are needed in assisting the material to react and form a dense body. Sintering aids can therefore be problematic, causing contamination that is harmful to the application. The new technique should be useful for aerospace, automotive and electronic component manufacturers.
