Robocasting of reaction bonded silicon carbide structures

A novel shaping method for the fabrication of reaction bonded silicon carbide structures was investigated in this work. A paste consisting of silicon carbide as inert filler and carbon powder was developed and printed by robocasting technology. Layer by layer deposition of the ceramic paste facilitates the printing of complex shaped structures. Different structures such as lattices, hollow cylinders, bending bars and gyroids were printed using nozzles with diameter of 0.5 mm and 1.5 mm. After pyrolysis at 700 °C and further heat treatment at 1850 °C the samples were infiltrated using the liquid silicon infiltration technique to obtain dense near-net shape RBSC structures. The robocasted structures showed a hardness of approximately 20 GPa, a thermal conductivity of ∼112 W/m*K, Young's modulus of ∼356 GPa, flexural strength of ∼224 MPa and an amount of residual silicon of approximately 23%. These measured properties are comparable with those of traditionally fabricated RBSC.