Fabrication of Ti3SiC2-based pastes for screen printing on paper-derived Al2O3 substrates

This paper describes the development and fabrication of pastes suitable for screen printing process using Ti3SiC2 as the ceramic filler and ethyl cellulose as the binder. With the aim of obtaining high quality screen printed films, the influence of different amounts of Ti3SiC2 filler (20-40 vol%) and binder (0-5 vol%) on the rheological properties of the pastes was investigated. Samples with higher viscosity, such as pastes containing 30 vol% and 40 vol% Ti3SiC2 filler, regardless of the amount of ethyl cellulose, showed a higher printing quality compared to the samples with other compositions. The different paste compositions were screen printed onto paper-derived Al2O3 substrates containing 28.6 ± 4.8% open porosity and sintered for 1 h under an argon atmosphere at 1600 °C. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis showed that the sintered films contained TiC as a primary phase and Ti3SiC2 as a secondary phase. The partial decomposition of Ti3SiC2 after sintering can be attributed to residual carbon from the organic additives, which decreases the thermal stability of this material.