SBIR Phase I: Electron Beam Curing of Polymer Interlayer in Silicon Carbide Joints

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project entitled " Electron Beam Curing of Polymer Interlayer in Silicon Carbide Joints" will develop the technology to enable economical commercialization of silicon carbide components. Current joining techniques are too time consuming to be economically viable for commercialization and mass production They tend to produce excessive polymer shrinkage and thus require excessive number of polymer infiltrations. The proposed pulsed electron beam curing technology will remove these obstacles by completing the polymer cross-linking in the microsecond time scale, which is comparable to the duration of the electron beam pulse. In this Phase I effort, the polymer shrinkage in the interlayer material will be studied first by subjecting it to electron beam irradiation. The resulting samples will be compared to those processed under conventional method, i.e., without undergoing electron beam processing. This will then be followed by the production of SiC joints. These joined test samples, produced with electron beam curing, will again be compared to a control joint sample. Computer simulation code will be used to guide the experiments. Success of this project will pave the way for commercializing SiC components in many different industrial and manufacturing markets, including petrochemical, semiconductor, heat-treating and heat-exchanger systems, aircraft and terrestrial gas turbines, and aircraft structural components.