Ternary packing of SiC and diamond particles in ethanol

Particle packing techniques employing a liquid phase were used for preparation of dense disks of SiC and diamond particulates. Forty-one SiC and fifteen diamond compositions in the ternary-component particle systems were used to determine the optimum percentages of coarse, medium, and fine particles for achieving high packing densities: over 80% for SiC and over 62% for diamond. High packing densities were achieved without vibration by simply mixing the three size fractions in ethanol followed by stirring during the initial evaporation stage. The packing density results for SiC were successfully correlated with the percentages of the coarse and fine particles using multiple regression analysis; however, the data for diamond could not be similarly correlated with particle composition because the experimental work was done in a narrow range of compositions and the range of packing densities was small.