Low temperature production of boron carbide and its characterization

Boron carbide is a significant product among hundreds boron compounds which has high market capacity. Boron carbide has a special place in advanced technology ceramic materials. It has many military and civil application areas with its properties such as high neutron absorption capacity, extreme hardness, low density, inert with chemicals, heat resistance. Various methods are available for production of boron carbide. Some of those are solgel, chemical vapor deposition, self propagating high temperature synthesis and carbothermal reduction. Common point of these methods is the requirement of high energy. In this work, the aim is synthesize of boron carbide powder at low temperatures with co-reduction method. BBr3, CCl4 and Na (which is co-reductant) was used as raw materials. In this work, reaction was performed at 3 different temperatures (400°C, 450°C, 500°C) and 5 different reaction times from 2 to 10 hours. Characterization of end products was carried out with FT-IR, TGA/DTA, XRD, SEM/EDS and particle size distribution analyses. As a result, powder which was obtained at 450°C and 8 hours, is a micron size powder and this powder is a boron carbide precursor material. After sintering 3 hours at 700°C, XRD analysis was performed and this analysis was showed that crystallization of boron carbide has begun.