Synthesis of Ultra High Temperature Ceramic Zirconium Carbide for Space Applications
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Synthesis of Ultra High Temperature Ceramic Zirconium Carbide for Space Applications B. S. Nithin Chandran1 · Deepa Devapal1 · Prabhakaran Payadakkam Veedu1 Received: 30 May 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 © Indian National Academy of Engineering 2020
Abstract Ultra high temperature zirconium carbide ceramic powder was prepared using a low cost technique using zirconium isopropoxide and phenolic resin. The effect of monomer feed ratio, heating rate and temperature on the nature and properties of the ceramics obtained were studied in detail. The samples were heat treated at two different temperatures using different heating rates and the ceramics obtained were characterised using XRD, SEM, TGA and particle size. The SEM images showed that the nature of particles obtained from both the systems is different. XRD confirmed complete ceramic conversion at 1650 °C whereas at 1600 °C, minor peaks for ZrO2 were present. The crystallite size of both the samples was well below 35 nm. Keywords Zirconium carbide · UHTC · Low cost route
Introduction Future space missions demand designing space vehicles to travel maximum distance in minimum time. The advancement in technologies like atmospheric re-entry vehicles and hypersonic vehicles has compelled the need to develop materials capable of sustaining temperatures above 2000 °C. Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics (UHTCs) refers to a class of ceramics having intriguing combination of metal-like and ceramic-like properties which enables them to sustain extreme environments (Fahrenholtz and Hilmas 2017). They are generally materials consisting of borides, carbides and nitrides of transition metals like Zirconium, Hafnium and Titanium. UHTCs possess melting point above 3000 °C, high hardness, good chemical stability and better mechanical properties at elevated temperature (Gudivada and Kandasubramanian 2019). Most studies on UHTC focus on Z rB2 based materials, which however has relatively low eutectic temperatures and hence, may not be suitable for very high temperature applications. Zirconium carbide (ZrC) ceramics have a high melting point due to strong covalent bonding of Zr-C, high * Deepa Devapal [email protected] 1
Ceramic Matrix Products Division, Analytical Spectroscopy and Ceramics Group, PCM Entity, VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram 695022, India
hardness, high electrical conductivity due to the presence of Zr-Zr bonds, high load bearing capabilities, excellent corrosion resistance and very good thermal shock resistance (Pierson 1996). Owing to this reason, Zirconium carbide is one of the most promising and potential candidate for high temperature applications in hypersonic vehicles, scram jet engines, nuclear power plants, cutting tools or metallurgical industries (Mallick et al. 2016). For the densification of UHTCs different processes like pressureless sintering, hot isostatic pressing, spark plasma sintering and physical or vapor deposition techniques are available (Cotton 2010). Compared with other techniques, pressureless sintering offers many
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