High temperature monitoring of silicon carbide ceramics by confocal energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

•X-ray scattering was used for monitoring oxidation situation of SiC ceramics.•A calibration curve was obtained.•The confocal X-ray scattering technology was based on polycapillary X-ray optics.•The variations of contents of components of SiC ceramics were obtained.

In the present work, we presented an alternative method for monitoring of the oxidation situation of silicon carbide (SiC) ceramics at various high temperatures in air by measuring the Compton-to-Rayleigh intensity ratios (ICo/IRa) and effective atomic numbers (Zeff) of SiC ceramics with the confocal energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometer. A calibration curve of the relationship between ICo/IRa and Zeff was established by using a set of 8 SiC calibration samples. The sensitivity of this approach is so high that it can be easily distinguished samples of Zeff differing from each other by only 0.01. The linear relationship between the variation of Zeff and the variations of contents of C, Si and O of SiC ceramics were found, and the corresponding calculation model of the relationship between the ΔZ and the ΔCC, ΔCSi, and ΔCO were established. The variation of contents of components of the tested SiC ceramics after oxidation at high temperature was quantitatively calculated based on the model. It was shown that the results of contents of carbon, silicon and oxygen obtained by this method were in good agreement with the results obtained by XPS, giving values of relative deviation less than 1%. It was concluded that the practicality of this proposed method for monitoring of the oxidation situation of SiC ceramics at high temperatures was acceptable.