Regular Article

Conventional and microwave assisted sintering of copper-silicon carbide metal matrix composites: a comparison

¹ Department of Manufacturing Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, VIT University Vellore, 632 014 Tamil Nadu, India
² Centre for Innovative Manufacturing Research (CIMR), VIT University Vellore, 632 014 Tamil Nadu, India
³ 107 Materials Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 16802 Pennsylvania, USA

^* Corresponding author: a.muthuchamy@vit.ac.in

Received: 8 November 2016
Accepted: 13 April 2017

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of heating mode on the sintering of Copper-SiC metal matrix composites containing up to 7.5 wt.% SiC. The sinterability of the Cu-SiC system consolidated in a 2.45 GHz multimode microwave furnace has been critically compared with that processed in a radiatively heated (conventional) furnace. As compared to conventional sintering, microwave processing has resulted in a greater densification. It was observed that an increase in SiC content resulted in a higher hardness of the materials for both the heating modes. For all compositions, the electrical conductivity and hardness of microwave-sintered Cu-SiC composites are higher than those of their conventionally sintered counterparts.