Electrical resistivity of silicon carbide ceramics sintered with 1 wt% aluminum nitride and rare earth oxide

The influence of additive composition on the electrical resistivity of hot-pressed liquid-phase sintered (LPS)-SiC was investigated using AlN–RE2O3 (RE = Sc, Nd, Eu, Gd, Ho, Er, Lu) mixtures at a molar ratio of 60:40. It was found that all specimens could be sintered to densities >95% of the theoretical density by adding 5 wt% in situ-synthesized nano-sized SiC and 1 wt% AlN–RE2O3 additives. Six out of seven SiC ceramics showed very low electrical resistivity on the order of 10−4 Ω m. This low electrical resistivity was attributed to the growth of nitrogen-doped SiC grains and the confinement of non-conducting RE-containing phases in the junction areas. The SiC ceramics sintered with AlN–Lu2O3 showed a relatively high electrical resistivity (∼10−2 Ω m) due to its lower carrier density (∼1017 cm−3), which was caused by the growth of faceted grains and the resulting weak interface between SiC grains.