• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.40 no.8
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• pp.751-757
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• 2003

Rapid densification of a SiC-30 wt% TiC powder with additive 10 wt% A1$_2$O$_3$-Y$_2$O$_3$-CaO was conducted by Spark Plasma Sintering(SPS). The fully-densified materials can be obtain through the SPS process with very fast heating rate and short holding time. In the present work, the heating rate and applied pressure were kept to be $100^{\circ}C$/min and 40 MPa, while sintering temperature varied from $1600^{\circ}C$ to $1800^{\circ}C$ for 10 min. The full densification of SiC-30 wt% TiC composites with the addition of $Al_2$O$_3$, $Y_2$O$_3$ and CaO was achieved at the temperature above $1700^{\circ}C$ by spark plasma sintering. The XRD found that 3C-SiC and TiC were maintained the entire SPS process temperature, without phase transformation of SiC and formation of YAG phase to $1800^{\circ}C$. The microstructures of the rapidly densified SiC-30 wt% TiC composites consisted of smaller equiaxed SiC grains and larger TiC grains. The biaxial strength of 635.2 MPa and fracture toughness of 6.12 MPaㆍ$m^{1/2}$ were found for the specimen prepared at $1750^{\circ}C$.