Effects of different debinding atmosphere on the properties of powder injection molded AIN ceramics

In the present work the influence of two different thermal debinding atmosphere, vacuum and air, on the properties of 5wt% Y2O3-doped aluminum nitride (AlN) ceramics was investigated. The AlN powder as a raw material was synthesized by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) and compact was fabricated by employing powder injection molding technique. The polymer-wax binder consists of 60wt% paraffin wax (PW), 35wt% polypropylene (PP) and 5wt% stearic acid (SA). The binder was removed through debinding process in two steps, solvent debinding followed by thermal debinding. After the removal of binder, specimens were sintered at 1850 degrees C in nitrogen atmosphere at atmospheric pressure. The result reveals that debinding atmosphere has significant effect on the thermal conductivity and densification of AlN ceramics. The microstructure and secondary phase identification was determined by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The thermal conductivity and density of injection molded AlN ceramics are 177.3W-m(-1).K-1 and 3.31g.cm(-3) in the air and 200.8W.m(-1).K-1 and 3.28g.cm(-3) in the vacuum.