Productionof zirconium carbide

   Zirconium carbide can be fabricated in several ways. One method is carbothermic reaction of zirconia by graphite. This results in a powder. Densified ZrC can then be made by sintering the powder of ZrC at upwards of2000 °C. Hot pressing of ZrC canbring down the sintering temperature and consequently helps in producing fine grained fully densified ZrC. Spark plasma sintering also has been used to produce fully densified ZrC.

  Zirconium carbide can also be fabricated by solution based processing. This is achieved by refluxing a metal oxide with acetylacetone.
Another method of fabrication is chemical vapour deposition. This is achieved by heating a zirconium sponge and parsing halide gas through it.Poor oxidation resistance over 800 °C limits the applications of ZrC. One way to improve the oxidation resistance of ZrC is to make composites.Important composites proposed areZrC-ZrB2 and ZrC-ZrB2-SiC composite.

These composites can work up to1800 °C.[citationneeded] Another method to improve this is to use another material as a barrier layer such as inTRISO fuel particles.

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