High toughness silicon carbide/graphite laminar composite by slip casting

A slip casting method has been developed to manufacture high toughness laminated SiC ceramics. The samples are produced by slip-casting alternate layers of SiC and graphite of various thickness ranging from 120 μm to 600 μm. After casting, the samples were dried and then pressureless sintered to high density. The graphite layer serves to deflect the crack and raise the apparent fracture toughness from 4 MPa · m12 to 14 MPa · m12. A strong effect of SiC and graphite layer thickness on apparent fracture toughness and flexural strength was observed.