Chemically activated combustion synthesis of MoSi2/Al cermet foams

In this work the feasibility of synthesizing MoSi2/Al cermet foam under the combustion mode was studied. A halogen containing organic polymer, namely, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) was used as foaming agent. It was shown that the target product reached the maximum porosity, up to 70%, when amount of the foaming agent was 0.04 mol. SEM analyses have shown there are two types of pores (macro and micro) in the products with diameter 0.2–1 mm and 0.01–0.05 mm, respectively. It was established that the portion of macro- and micro-pores depends on the amount of foaming agents and the inert gas pressure. It was established that increase of the metal amount leads to the decrease of the porosity while the toughness increases.