Fracture Toughness of Liquid Phase Sintered SiC by Using Indentation Fracture Method

SiC materials have excellent high temperature strength, low coefficient of thermal expansion, good resistance to oxidation and good thermal and chemical stability etc. However, the brittle characteristics of SiC such as low fracture toughness and low strain-to fracture still impose a severe limitation on practical applications of SiC materials. Therefore, in the interests of safety, we are required to measure fracture toughness of materials. In the present work, monolithic Liquid Phase Sintered SiC (LPS-SiC) was fabricated by hot pressing method under 20MPa using sintering additives at different temperature such as 1760oC, 1780oC, 1800oC and 1820oC. The starting powder was high purity β-SiC nano-powder with an average particle size of 30nm. Compositions of sintering additives were Al2O3 / Y2O3 = 0.7 and 1.5 (wt. %). Monolithic LPS-SiC was evaluated in terms of sintering density, hardness and fracture toughness through indentation fracture method by the Vickers hardness tester. Sintered density, hardness and fracture toughness of fabricated LPS-SiC increased with the increase of sintering temperature. They are higher than those of fabricated SiC by the chemical vapor deposition method.