Fabrication of Ti₃SiC₂-based pastes for screen printing on paper-derived Al₂O₃ substrates

This paper describes the development and fabrication of pastes suitable for screen printing process using Ti₃SiC₂ as the ceramic filler and ethyl cellulose as the binder. With the aim of obtaining high quality screen printed films, the influence of different amounts of Ti₃SiC₂ filler (20–40 vol%) and binder (0–5 vol%) on the rheological properties of the pastes was investigated. Samples with higher viscosity, such as pastes containing 30 vol% and 40 vol% Ti₃SiC₂ filler, regardless of the amount of ethyl cellulose, showed a higher printing quality compared to the samples with other compositions. The different paste compositions were screen printed onto paper-derived Al₂O₃ substrates containing 28.6 ± 4.8% open porosity and sintered for 1 h under an argon atmosphere at 1600 °C. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis showed that the sintered films contained TiC as a primary phase and Ti₃SiC₂ as a secondary phase. The partial decomposition of Ti₃SiC₂ after sintering can be attributed to residual carbon from the organic additives, which decreases the thermal stability of this material.