Abstract
Titanium carbide(TiC) has a poor sinterability due to the strong covalent bond. Thus, it is generally fabricated by either hot pressing or pressureless-sintering at elevated temperature by the addition of sintering aids such as nickel(Ni), molybdenum(Mo) and cobalt(Co). However, these sintering methods have the following disadvantages; (1) the complicated process, (2) the high energy consumption, and (3) the possibility of leaving inevitable impurities in the product, etc. In order to reduce above disadvantages, we investigated the optimum conditions under which dense titanium carbide bodies could be synthesized and sintered simultaneously by high pressure self-combustion sintering(HPCS) method. This method makes good use of the explosive high energy from spontaneous exothermic reaction between titanium and carbon. The optimum conditions for the nearly full-densification were as follows; (1) The densification of sintered body becomes high by increasing the pressing pressure from 400kgf/$\textrm{cm}^2$ upto 1200 kgf/$\textrm{cm}^2$. (2) Instead of adding the coarse graphite or activated carbon, the fine particles of carbon black should be added as a carbon source. (3) The optimum molar ratio of carbon to titanium (C/Ti) was unity. In reality, titanium carbide body which were prepared under optimum conditions had relatively dense textures with the apparent porosity of 0.5% and the relative density of 98%.
