Low-temperature reactive sintering of carbon vacant high-entropy carbide ceramics with in-situ formed silicon carbide

It is thought that the sintering of high-entropy (HE) ceramics is generally more difficult when compared to that of the corresponding single-component ceramics. In this paper, we report a novel approach to densify the HE carbide ceramics at relatively low temperatures with a small amount of silicon. Reactive spark plasma sintering (SPS) was used to densify the ceramics using powders of HE carbide and silicon as starting materials. Dense ceramics can be obtained at 1600 -1700 degrees C. X-ray diffraction analysis reveals that only non-stoichiometric HE carbide phase with carbon vacancy and SiC phase exist in the obtained ceramics. The in-situ formed SiC phase inherits the morphology of the starting silicon powder owing to the slower diffusion of silicon atoms compared to that of the carbon atoms in HE carbide phase. The mechanical properties of the prepared ceramics were preliminarily studied.