Synthesis of silicon carbide nanopowders in free flowing plasma jet with different energy levels

Silicon carbide (SiC) nanopowders were produced by the synthesis in an electrodischarge plasma jet generated by a high-current pulsed coaxial magnetoplasma accelerator. The present work focuses on the experiments where the obtained hypersonic plasma jet flew into space of the reactor chamber without impact on a target. The energy level of experiments was changed from ∼10.0 to ∼30.0 kJ. Four experiments were carried out at different energy levels. The powder products synthesized by the plasmadynamic method were studied by such well-known methods: X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM). All the powders mainly contain cubic silicon carbide (β-SiC) particles with clear crystal structures and triangular shapes. SiC content reaches its maximum value 95% at the energy level 21.0 kJ, then SiC content is decreased to 70% the energy level 27.8 kJ. The powder crystallites in different experiments have approximately the same average crystallite size because quasistationary time, which allows growing powder crystallites, is absent.