Advanced Ceramic and Composite Materials
Consistent with its focus on engineered carbonaceous materials, Superior Graphite offers a range of high purity silicon carbide and boron carbide powders for sintered or hot pressed parts, coatings, and additives. Known for their extreme hardness, low specific gravity, and elevated temperature performance, these materials are used for ballistic armor, abrasives, composites, brake linings, heating elements, nozzles and igniters. Additionally, Superior Graphite is active in emerging technologies and processes related to Non-Oxide Ceramic Powders, such as:
Additive manufacturing
Advanced sintering processes
(i.e. field assisted, direct current and spark plasma)
Ceramic matrix composites
Pre-ceramic polymer additives
Micro-abrasives for lapping and polishing
Fig. 02
SEM of Beta Silicon Carbide
How can we help address your challenges?
Issue
Additive manufacturing: there can be difficulty with achieving optimum sintered part density.
Solution
Using controlled and tight particle size powders, Superior Graphite provides multiple additive manufacturing (3D printing) technologies with the ideal particle sizes for their process.
Issue
Advanced sintering processes: this application can experience part failure, or sub-optimal density parts, if materials with lower purity or incorrect particle size distribution are utilized. The requirement for rapid part consolidation can be a problem with an unsuitable powder composition.
Solution
We offer binderless powders without any additives to complement a historic portfolio of powders with sintering aids and binders. These products are suitable for Field Assisted (FAST), Spark Plasma (SPS), and Direct Current (DCS) Sintering, and other advanced processes.
Issue
Ceramic matrix composites: micro-cracks and internal porosity can be catastrophic to the performance of ceramic matrix composites.
Solution
Superior Graphite promotes the lowest temperature sintering of parts using our unique, domestically synthesized, Beta-SiC, which also has a fine particle size distribution to penetrate pores and fiber interstices. This material is also compatible with silicon carbide fiber morphologies.
Issue
Micro-abrasives: ultra-fine lapping and polishing surfaces for semiconductor applications and other processes, such as chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP), demand extremely fine, uniform, sub-micron particles.
Solution
Superior Graphite offers ultra-fine SiC and B4C powders, with controlled particle size distributions, for the finest grain and grit abrasives, with superior hardness.
Issue
Pre-ceramic polymers: the yield of the resulting ceramic can be adversely affected if a silicon carbide without the proper particle fineness is utilized.
Solution
Our Beta-SiC powder additives for ceramic-yielding polymers are designed with the appropriate particle size to help achieve uniform polymer infiltration, or coating uniformity, prior to the pyrolysis process. This helps to reduce part porosity, and enhances the effective yield of the pre-ceramic polymers.
In addition to traditional non-oxide ceramic markets, such as wear parts, toner additives, and armor, Superior Graphite is active in developing new products for emerging markets. This includes both the industry-unique beta-silicon carbide products (synthesized domestically by Superior Graphite) and boron carbide powders. We produce these materials using state-of-the-art ceramic powder sizing capabilities, enabling controlled particle size distributions, and custom blends of powders, which supports dis-similar material, bi-modal, and other custom formulations.
