Effect of Si/C Ratio
Changes in the density of ceramic compacts with different Si/C ratios are depicted in Figure 8. At a fixed amount of C in the starting powder mixture, the density was reduced by an increase in the Si/C ratio, especially at higher C content (Figure 8(a)). The microstructure of SiC-Si-C ceramics at initial C content of 5 wt.% at Si/C ratios of 2 and 4 is shown in Figure 9. The porosity was not considerably changed by increasing the Si content from 5 to 10 wt.% (Figures 7(a) and 9(a)). Nevertheless, a large fraction of porosity and unreacted Si and C phases are observable at Si/C ratio of 4 (Figure 9(b)). The presence of Si phase around SiC particles and microcracks within them is also noticed. XRD patterns of ceramic specimens produced from μ-SiC powders at two different Si/C ratios are shown in Figure 10. At Si/C = 1, α-SiC and β-SiC phases are detected. The appearance of weak SiO2 reflections can be attributed to the presence of this phase in the initial powder. On the other hand, Si peaks appear in addition to α-SiC, β-SiC, and SiO2 peaks in the diffraction pattern of ceramic with Si/C = 4. This is related to the remaining of unreacted Si in the specimen as shown in Figure 9(b).