Synthesis of high-purity Ti2SC powder by microwave hybrid heating

Abstract

Abstract A novel simple method is presented to synthesize high-purity Ti2SC powder using Ti/C/S and Ti/C/TiS2 systems by microwave hybrid heating at different temperatures in argon atmosphere. It was confirmed that the synthesis temperature is strongly dependent on the starting composition. For Ti/C/S system, Ti2SC with small amounts of TiS and TiC was synthesized at 1200 °C. For Ti/C/TiS2 system, high-purity Ti2SC was synthesized at 800 °C and above. The synthesis of Ti2SC powder at low temperature was attributed to the combination of microwave effect by microwave hybrid heating and the introduction of TiS2 as sulfur source. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis indicated that the layered structure of Ti2SC particles is perfectly formed at 1100 °C, and the crystal particle size approaches to homogeneity which is about 2–5 μm. It was presumed that the formation mechanism of Ti/C/TiS2 system is that TiS2 firstly reacts with Ti to form Ti–S intermetallics, then Ti–S intermetallics reacts with un-reacted Ti and graphite to produce Ti2SC.

Keywords

• Ti2SC
• microwave hybrid heating
• formation mechanism