Effect of Heating Schedule on Fabrication of Ti ₃ SiC ₂ ‐based Composites from Ti–SiC Powder Mixture

We herein describe a set of experiments used to study the effect of heating schedule on phase formation during the fabrication of Ti ₃ SiC ₂ ‐based materials from Ti–SiC powder mixtures by means of pressureless sintering. We found that combustion was initiated at a temperature of about 1330°C, which resulted in the formation of Ti ‐rich eutectic melt followed by crystallization of Ti ₃ SiC ₂ . It was shown that when preannealing was performed at 1150°C, no further combustive process could occur, and an intermediate, nonequilibrium phase composition, consisting of Ti ₅ Si ₃ C _x , TiC , and SiC remained until the end of the heat treatment. We herein discuss the mechanistic interpretation of this behavior.