Fabrication of Ti2AlC by spark plasma sintering from elemental powders and thermodynamics analysis of Ti-Al-C system

A ternary-layered carbide Ti-2 AlC material could be synthesized by spark plasma sintering(SPS) technology using elemental powder mixture of Ti, Al and active carbon. By means of XRD and SEM, phases were identified and microscopically evaluated. The experimental results show that the main phase in the product was fully crystallized Ti2AlC with small particle size when sintered at 1200 degrees C. The synthesis temperature of SPS was 200-400 degrees C lower than that of hot pressing (HP) or hot isostatic pressing (HIP). Through thermodynamics calculations, the mechanism of Ti2AlC was studied by calculating changes of Gibbs free energy of reactions.