Publications Details
Recent progress in ceramic joining
Both fundamental and practical aspects of ceramic joining are understood well enough for many, if not most, applications requiring moderate strengths at room temperature. This paper argues that the two greatest needs in ceramic joining are for techniques to join buried interfaces by selective heating, and methods for joining ceramics for use at temperatures of 800 to 1,200 C. Heating with microwave radiation or with high-energy electron beams has been used to join buried ceramic interfaces, for example SiC to SiC. Joints with varying levels of strength at temperatures of 600 to 1,000 C have been made using four techniques: (1) transient liquid phase bonding; (2) joining with refractory braze alloys; (3) joining with refractory glass compositions; and (4) joining using preceramic polymers. Joint strengths as high as 550 MPa at 1,000 C have been reported for silicon nitride-silicon nitride bonds tested in four-point flexure.