Influence of the porosity of SiC on its optical properties and oxidation kinetics

Abstract

CEA laboratory has developed an additive manufacturing technique with SiC powders and the material obtained need to be characterized. Therefore, we studied the change of optical properties and oxidation kinetics of SiC samples for the last step of the elaboration process. In this investigation, the optical properties and the oxidation kinetics of two SiC materials of two different densities and post-treated at LCTS laboratory have been compared. Their room-temperature optical properties were measured and both materials were oxidized using solar facilities at PROMES laboratory. It was observed that a higher porosity would increase both the solar absorptivity α and total emissivity ϵ of the SiC. Nevertheless, the α/ϵ ratio is improved with the density, increasing from 1.04 to 1.22. The less dense SiC presents also a faster oxidation kinetics, the determined activation energy increasing from 110 to 270 kJ mol-1