Silicon Carbide Ceramic

Silicon carbide ceramic is one of the hardest and strongest engineering materials available, finding widespread application across automotive, mechanical and chemical industries.

Saint-Gobain Performance Ceramics & Refractories offers an expansive selection of sintered, reaction bonded, metal matrix and mullite-bonded silicon carbides with exceptional chemical and mechanical properties at temperatures up to 1600degC for end use applications. These fully densified products boast outstanding chemical and mechanical performance in end use temperatures as low as 150degC.

High-temperature strength

Silicon carbide ceramic is one of the lightest, hardest and strongest advanced engineering materials. It is toxicologically safe, resistant to abrasion and features excellent mechanical properties compared to metals; such as its high Young modulus and low coefficient of thermal expansion.

SiC is an ideal material to meet the rigorous demands of various industries, providing hardness and modulus of elasticity necessary for armour ballistics at a fraction of the weight of other materials. Black-grey SiC offers both properties simultaneously to meet this challenge.

SSiC is an excellent material for corrosion- and abrasion-resistant components, such as pump and mechanical seals, shot blast nozzles and cyclones. In addition, this rigid and low expansion coefficient material has proven useful as optical mirrors in telescopes due to its chemical, wear, oxidation resistance and high temperature strength properties.

High-temperature corrosion resistance

Silicon carbide is one of the lightest and hardest ceramic materials. It is corrosion-resistant and resistant to acids and lyes. Furthermore, it offers excellent thermal conductivity with low thermal expansion; making it suitable for high temperatures as well as harsh environments. Due to its strength properties it makes an excellent material choice for nozzles, bearings, bulletproof plates and similar applications.

SiC’s corrosion resistance stems from its thin protective layer that forms over its surface, creating an oxide barrier to inhibit direct interaction of its substrate with attacking species that leads to parabolic corrosion kinetics. Rejuvenation of this oxide barrier depends on factors like chemical species present in its attacking environment as well as impurities, sintering aids and grain boundary phases present within its substrate material.

Foam ceramics feature uniform pore distribution, high porosity and specific surface area, selective permeability to liquid and gas media, excellent chemical, electrical, magnetic and optical functions as well as excellent chemical, physical, magnetic and optical functions – characteristics which make them the ideal material choice for products operating under high temperature, high pressure or extreme environments.

High-temperature oxidation resistance

Foamed silicon carbide ceramics boast excellent oxidation resistance, making them suitable for use in construction departments and semiconductor fields to construct heat exchangers of all sorts. Their special space network structure improves thermal conductivity for improved heat transference.

Silicon carbide’s combination of mechanical properties and chemical resistance makes it a sought-after engineering material. It withstands corrosion, abrasion, erosion, while its high modulus of elasticity ensures dimensional stability. Silicon carbide also excels as an adhesive material in pumps, mechanical seals and bearings, second only to diamond and cubic boron nitride in terms of tribological performance.

High-temperature wear resistance

Silicon carbide ceramics are hard and temperature resistant materials, making them the ideal material choice for industrial applications. Their strength remains constant at extremely high temperatures, as they can withstand harsh environments with reduced friction coefficients, acid and alkali corrosion resistance and excellent chemical resistance.

Silicon carbide ceramics’ wear properties are determined by several factors, including initial surface roughness and chemical and mechanical characteristics of their material. Initial surface roughness influences tribologically transformed structure layers formed, which reduce the energy needed to activate wear while also decreasing wear debris production.

Foam ceramics possess an inherently uniform three-dimensional network structure and are distinguished by their large specific surface area, selective permeability to liquid and gas media, excellent thermal, electrical, magnetic and optical functions and thermal regulation properties. As such they find widespread application in fields as varied as metallurgy, mechanical engineering, transportation machinery national defense and environmental protection.

Low thermal expansion

Advanced ceramics feature unique atomic composition that enables them to remain stable at high temperatures while other materials expand under increasing temperatures, like stainless steel. Silicon carbide has less than half the coefficient of thermal expansion as stainless steel.

As such, it is an ideal material for gas sealing rings, mechanical seals, bearing parts in petrochemical and aerospace applications, providing resistance against corrosion, oxidation, chemical wear and thermal shock.

Sintered silicon carbide (SSiC) features extreme hardness and high modulus of elasticity that make it capable of reliably absorbing impact energy, offering ballistic protection at considerable weight savings compared to metal components.