Fabrication of high-purity ternary carbide Ti3AlC2 by spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique

The effect of silicon on synthesis of Ti3AlC2 by spark plasma sintering (SPS) from TiC/Ti/Al powders was investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used for phase identification and microstructure evaluation. The results showed that addition of silicon can considerably accelerate the synthesis reaction of Ti3AlC2 and fully dense, essentially single-phase polycrystalline Ti3AlC2 could be successfully obtained by sintering 2TiC/1Ti/1Al/0.2Si powders at 1200–1250 °C under a pressure of 30 MPa. SEM micrographs showed the obtained Ti3AlC2 samples to be about 2–5 μm thick and 10–25 μm long platelets. The fracture toughness and flexural strength of Ti3AlC2 were 7.0 ± 0.2 MPa m1/2 and 450 ± 10 MPa, respectively.