Recrystallized Silicon Carbide

Silicon carbide (SiC) is an extremely tough chemical compound with excellent thermal, mechanical, and chemical properties that makes it popular in industry due to its hard ceramic applications. SiC is often employed in medical device production because of these excellent qualities.

Recrystallized silicon carbide has proven its superiority in several high-tech industries, where its versatility excels under conditions that would cause other materials to falter. Recrystallized silicon carbide forms the cornerstone of advanced technologies that power our world today.

High Strength

Recrystallized silicon carbide is an extremely strong material that remains strong even at very high temperatures, making it ideal for many applications. Furthermore, its corrosion-resistance is unparalleled: acids, bases and even molten metals don’t break it down! It makes an ideal material choice.

RSiC can be manufactured through various processes, including slip casting, extrusion and injection molding. Once sintered at high temperatures to form ceramic form, all binders used to hold together powder are eliminated to produce pure RSiC that can be formed into various shapes and sizes.

R-SiC can be formed into low-mass kiln furniture such as saggers, shed boards and beams to significantly lower the weight of the structure and lower loading ratios and save energy costs. Furthermore, its shape enables faster firing rates at reduced fuel costs.

RSiC can also be found as components of kilns such as batts, supports and rollers – which allow a greater load of ceramics to be fired simultaneously, increasing productivity while decreasing energy costs. Furthermore, its resistance to thermal shock makes recovery from power outages quicker.

High Thermal Conductivity

Recrystallized silicon carbide boasts superior thermal properties that enable it to perform under extreme conditions in which other materials would fail, making R-SiC an indispensable building block of high-tech industries and inspiring advancements that shape tomorrow.

R-SiC can be tailored to suit different application needs by shaping it to your shape. Production methods for R-SiC include slip casting, extrusion and injection molding – in each of which the mixture is formed into its desired form before being sintered at high temperatures for densification into ceramic material.

Sintering involves filling gaps between coarse silica grains with fine particles of silica and carbon, creating an enhanced microstructure and improving quality. Sintering also helps reduce weight and cost while maintaining strength of refractories.

Sintering also removes any binder used to produce RSiC powder, leaving pure and unadulterated refractory ceramic that’s easier to handle and process, providing more fabrication options for your application.

Saint-Gobain Performance Ceramics & Refractories has you covered if you need new ceramic materials for your project or an armor system to ward off ballistic threats, with lightweight R-SiC ceramics that meet a range of environmental and application needs. Get in touch today to explore what our R-SiC solutions have to offer.

High Resistance to Corrosion

Recrystallized Silicon Carbide (RSiC) stands out as an ideal material for applications requiring corrosion-resistance and impact resistance, including mining and petroleum refinement environments. Thanks to its durable ceramic composition, RSiC can withstand extreme temperatures without degrading in strength or chemical properties – perfect for environments involving mining and refinement operations as well as being non-toxic for environments in which safety and environmental considerations are prioritized.

RSiC stands out from dense SiC materials by having superior resistance to corrosion and oxidation due to the formation of an oxygen film during production that prevents contact with acids, alkalis and solvents. This passive film forms through an evaporation-condensation process during preparation as well as non-shrinkage consolidation of raw materials; unlike current powder sintering technologies which utilize sintering aids that result in lower purity levels.

RSiC stands out due to its exceptional abrasion and corrosion resistant properties, making it a top choice for gas burner media and diesel particulate filters. In these applications, it can withstand extreme conditions, such as molten salts and sulfuric acid corrosion, without experiencing erosion.

Slip casting, extrusion and injection molding can all be used to fabricate RSiC for specific applications, with slip casting being particularly versatile in shaping intricate and complex forms to meet them. By employing such methods of creation, RSiC can be made with variable pore size distribution and porosity to meet all necessary application needs.

High Porosity

R-SiC stands out among its dense material counterparts by possessing an exceptionally porosity. This allows it to absorb a great deal of solar energy and convert it to heat, making it the ideal material for renewable thermal systems used in solar power plants. Furthermore, R-SiC also exhibits exceptional resistance to chemical corrosion, making it suitable for environments such as acids or liquid metals that could attack it.

There are various techniques for fabricating porous silicon carbide. One of the more widely-used is polymer replica fabrication, which involves depositing an impregnating suspension on a polymer sponge and curing/pyrolyzing it before producing porous silicon carbide ceramics with pores ranging from 10-5mm and up to 95% pore densities. Unfortunately, however, this method has its drawbacks; uniform pore size distribution may be difficult to attain and mechanical strength of porous ceramics produced may suffer as a result.

Other methods can provide more versatility in terms of pore size and density, for instance Park and his colleagues [132] processed macroporous silicon carbide by mixing SiC nano powder, carbon nano powder, phenolic resin and die-formed bodies containing this blend before pyrolyzing them to achieve tailored porosities of up to 88%.

Lopez-Alvarez and his colleagues [105] employed juncus maritimus (sea rush) as a template to produce anisotropic SiC pore structures with diameters ranging from 50 mm in pine to 350 mm in oak; this allowed them to achieve various functions within cells, such as catalytic support and sintering-free filtration.