High Density Boron Carbide Armor Tiles by Microwave Processing

Microwave sintering of ceramics has many advantages compared to the conventional process, for example, reduction in manufacturing costs and processing times, improving product uniformity, microstructures, properties, and yield. By using a novel process with microwave to press the B4C preform that is effectively heated by microwave, fully dense B4C can be achieved at very short process time. A simple cold pressing equipment can be used to achieve this process, capital cost of the production can be dramatically reduced. The production time will also be reduced by using microwave heating. The proposed idea can be achieved by four approaches, (1) uniaxial pressing, (2) pseudoisostatic pressing, and (3) hot isostatic pressing (HIP). Anticipated Benefits: If the proposed research is successful, the microwave pressure sintering process will provide a low cost technology to make dense boron carbide ceramics. The microwave pressure sintering can also be applied on many applications beside boron carbide. The applications areas include refractory ceramics, ceramic cermets, composites, et al.. In addition, many new material systems that were not available or hard to achieve by conventional techniques can be designed and fabricated by this technique.