Boron silicon carbides

Boron, silicon carbide, diamond and other materials can be deposited by chemical vapor deposition on the surface of hot wires or hot fibers. If a minimal vapor deposit is applied, the process will modify only the surface of the fiber and produce a coating, while leaving its core functionality unchanged. If, however, a thick vapor deposit is applied, the process will create a new and very large diameter fiber that has the functionality of the sheath and a sacrificial core. 

Natural fibres such as flax, hemp, silk, jute, sisal, kenaf, cotton, etc are being used to reinforce matrices mainly thermoplastics and thermosets by many researchers. The principal synthetic fibres in commercial use are various types of glass, carbon, or aramid although other fibres, such as boron, silicon carbide, and aluminium oxide, are used in limited quantities. All these fibres can be incorporated into a matrix either in continuous lengths or in discontinuous (short) lengths. Both these fibres have some advantages and disadvantages. 

The common commercially available fibers used in composites are fiberglass, graphite (carbon), aramid, polyethylene, boron, silicon carbide, and other ceramics such as silicon nitride, alumina, and alumina silica. Many matrix choices are available, both thermosetting and thermoplastic. Each type has an impact on the processing technique, physical properties, and environmental resistance of the finished composite. The most common resin matrices include polyester, vinyl esters, epoxy, bismaleimides, polyimides, cyanate ester, and triazine. 

Glass, carbon, and the aramids are the most common fiber reinforcements incorporated into polymer matrices. Other fiber materials that are used to much lesser degrees are boron, silicon carbide, and aluminum oxide tensile moduli, tensile strengths, specific strengths, and specific moduli of these materials in fiber form are given in Table 16.4. Boron fiber-reinforced polymer composites have been used in military aircraft components, helicopter rotor blades, and sporting goods. Silicon carbide and aluminum oxide fibers are used in tennis rackets, circuit boards, military armor, and rocket nose cones. 

The covalent carbides These include boron carbide B4C and silicon carbide SiC the latter is made by heating a mixture of silica and coke in an electric furnace to about 2000 K ... 

Experimental applications include the direct deposition of patterns as small as 0.5 im in semiconductor applications using holographic methods, and the production of rods and coreless boron and silicon carbide fibers (see Ch. 19). 

Carbides produced by CVD include the refractory-metal carbides and two important non-metallic carbides boron carbide and silicon carbide. The refractory-metal carbides consist of those of the nine transition elements of Groups IVa, Va, and Via and the 4th, 5th, and 6th Periods as shown below in Table 9.1. 

The atomic and crystalline structure of the two non-metallic carbides, boron and silicon carbides, is less complex than that of the... 

Present oxidation-protection systems are based on silicon carbide (SiC), which is applied by pack cementation or by chemical-vapor infiltration (CVI) (see Ch. 4).d ] Boron, zirconium, and other... 

CVD is used in the industrial production of inorganic structural fibers such as boron and silicon carbide. Boron fibers are, in... 

Thistable(and Table 19.2below) shows that the major competitor to CVD SiC is carbon as both fibers have similar properties and are in the same cost bracket. Another competitor is boron but it is expensive and may eventually be replaced by silicon carbide. 

Two fibers are presently produced by CVD on a commercial scale boron and silicon carbide. The production of these two fibers requires a monofilament starter core capable of being heated resistively such as a tungsten or graphite fiber. I l The deposition apparatus is shown schematically in Fig. 19.1. 

CVD silicon carbide fibers are a recent development with prom-ising potential which may take over some of the applications of CVD boron fibers or other refractory fibers, providing that the production cost can be reduced. 

Silicon carbide, high boron borosilicate glass, trace elements in glass... 

Non-oxide ceramics such as silicon carbide (SiC), silicon nitride (SijN ), and boron nitride (BN) offer a wide variety of unique physical properties such as high hardness and high structural stability under environmental extremes, as well as varied electronic and optical properties. These advantageous properties provide the driving force for intense research efforts directed toward developing new practical applications for these materials. These efforts occur despite the considerable expense often associated with their initial preparation and subsequent transformation into finished products. 

Refractories such as boron nitride, silicon nitride, silicon carbide, and boron carbide are of great importance for the production or protection of systems which can be operated in very high... 

On heating in air at 10°C per min, poly(m-carborane-siloxane) shows typically only 4% mass loss at 450°C and 7% mass loss at 600°C (see Fig. 4). In comparison, siloxanes without carborane units, show an approximate 50% mass loss at 450°C. As a consequence of the relatively high boron and carbon content of these materials, pyrolysis is expected to generate ceramic residues of boron carbide/silicon carbide. 

Boron-containing nonoxide amorphous or crystalline advanced ceramics, including boron nitride (BN), boron carbide (B4C), boron carbonitride (B/C/N), and boron silicon carbonitride Si/B/C/N, can be prepared via the preceramic polymers route called the polymer-derived ceramics (PDCs) route, using convenient thermal and chemical processes. Because the preparation of BN has been the most in demand and widespread boron-based material during the past two decades, this chapter provides an overview of the conversion of boron- and nitrogen-containing polymers into advanced BN materials. 

The high-temperature stability of SiC-based ceramics is well-known, and therefore its composite materials have been investigated for application to high-tem-perature structural materials [19-21]. However, well-known SiC-based fibers and matrix-materials stained with alkali salt are easily oxidized at high temperatures in air [22]. This would be a serious problem when these materials are used near the ocean or in a combustion gas containing alkali elements. In particular, a silicon carbide fiber containing boron (a well-known sintering aid for SiC) over 1 wt% was extensively oxidized under the above condition. In this... 

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