Si-SiC ceramics from plant precursor

Synthesis, characterization, and wear and friction properties of variably structured SiC/Si elements made from wood by molten Si impregnation

“…4 During the last two decades, biological materials [5][6][7][8] have been favoured as raw materials for synthesizing engineering ceramics and composites. Natural materials like rice hulls, 9 cotton fibers 10 and woods from different kind of trees [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] have thus * Corresponding author. Tel.…”

Conversion of wooden structures into porous SiC with shape memory synthesis

“…Plants are also used as starting materials, and the resulting products, under certain conditions, nearly retain the shape of the original solid framework of the plants. Molten silicon impregnation [11][12][13][14][15] and silicon vapor impregnation [16] have been employed earlier to convert charcoal obtained from wood into SiC. But this process does not retain any porosity of the wooden material as it fills the pores with molten silicon.…”

Microstructural characterization using orientation imaging microscopy of cellular Si/SiC ceramics synthesized by replication of Indian dicotyledonous plants

“…Duplex Si/SiC ceramic composite, an industrially important engineering material, which is conventionally prepared by liquid silicon infiltration (LSI) technique 6,7 involving expensive synthetic raw material powders of desirable quality and complex green shape making, can also be prepared following transformation of bioorganic structures, especially plant structures inherent in wood and stem into ceramic structures. A number of recent publications and patents [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] has dealt with different aspects of such processing. The most common practice is to make use of some wood or other plant material, suitably pieced and/or shaped, in the preparation of a carbonized preform under controlled condition of thermal processing and allow the latter to react with silicon bearing liquid or gas under vacuum or in an inert atmosphere.…”

“…The cellular SiC based ceramics are property-wise comparable to their conventional counterparts. 9,10,18 It has been pointed out that caudex stems of monocotyledons are structurally different from dicotyledonous woods and that replication of these structures in SiC ceramics can lead to microstructurally different materials. 16,17 Recent communications deal with the preliminary aspects of the processing and characterization of cellular Si/SiC ceramics derived by replicating the structure of some Indian dicotyledonous woods 19 and attempt at a comparison of dicot wood and monocot stem as plant precursors for synthesis of Si/SiC based engineering ceramics.…”

“…20 Characterization of cellular SiC based ceramics normally involves different microscopic techniques. 9,18,19,[21][22][23][24][25] An emerging technique of orientation imaging microscopy (OIM) has been used in a limited way. 9 A relatively fast acquisition and automated indexing of backscattered Kikuchi diffraction has made OIM a promising technique for microstructural characterization.…”