Densification of Ultra-Refractory Transition Metal Diboride Ceramics
Abstract
The densification behavior of transition metal diboride compounds was reviewed with emphasis on ZrB2 and HfB2. These compounds are considered ultra-high temperature ceramics because they have melting temperatures above 3000°C. Densification of transition metal diborides is difficult due to their strong covalent bonding, which results in extremely high melting temperatures and low self-diffusion coefficients. In addition, oxide impurities present on the surface of powder particles promotes coarsening, which further inhibits densification. Studies prior to the 1990s predominantly used hot pressing for densification. Those reports revealed densification mechanisms and identified that oxygen impurity contents below about 0.5 wt% were required for effective densification. Subsequent studies have employed advanced sintering methods such as spark plasma sintering and reactive hot pressing to produce materials with nearly full density and higher metallic purity. Further studies are needed to identify fundamental densification mechanisms and further improve the elevated temperature properties of transition metal diborides.
Copyright
Authors retain copyright of the published article and have the right to use the article in the ways permitted to third parties under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI. This license allows to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made.