Wetting behavior and reactivity of liquid Si-10Zr alloy in contact with glassy carbon

In designing advanced refractory composites for highly demanding applications, reactive infiltration of liquid Si-enriched Si-Zr alloys into C-or SiC-based preforms may be a viable cost-less manufacturing process. In such cases, in view to optimize liquid assisted processes such as reactive infiltration, fundamental investigations of the interfacial phenomena occurring when the liquid Si-Zr alloys are in contact with C and SiC substrates, are key steps. For this reason, aiming to ''mimic'' the conventional operating conditions imposed within a reactive infiltration process, the contact heating sessile drop method was applied to perform a basic study concerning the interaction phenomena taking place at the interface of Si-10% at Zr alloy/Glassy Carbon substrate under an Ar atmosphere. Specifically, the contact angle values as a function of time were measured in the temperature range of 1354-1500 °C. The final contact angle values decreased slightly with an increase in temperature.Moreover, at T = 1450 °C, the contact angle increased over a larger time interval before reaching its final value. The kinetics of SiC crystal growth at the interface and the related processing parameters such as temperature and time were carefully analysed. The growth of SiC crystals and their packaging phenomenon are time and temperature-dependent phenomena.