Low-temperature synthesis of high-purity Ti3AlC2 by MA-SPS technique

Ternary carbide Ti3AlC2 was synthesized by mechanical alloying (MA) and spark plasma sintering (SPS) from elemental powder mixtures of Ti, Al and C, and the effect of Al content on formation of Ti3AlC2 during both processes was investigated. The results showed that adding proper Al content in the staring materials significantly increased the phase purity of Ti3AlC2 in the synthesized samples. Dense and high-purity Ti3AlC2 with <1 wt.% TiC could be successfully obtained by spark plasma sintering of powders mechanically alloyed for 9.5 h from a starting powder mixtures of 3Ti/1.1Al/2C at a lower sintering temperature of 1050 °C for 10–20 min.