Reduced Cost 2700F CMC Component Manufacturing

In this Navy Phase II SBIR Program, MATECH proposes to leverage its lengthy experience in ceramic matrix composite (CMC) fabrication with recent advances in Field Assisted Sintering Technology (FAST) to demonstrate dramatic cost reduction and improved CMC performance. FAST is also known as Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). FAST can consolidate materials in as short an active process time as 2 minutes! Typical process times range from 5 to 15 minutes. FAST has been demonstrated for metals, glasses, ceramics, and nano-composite materials. Little information is available in the public domain, however, about the application of FAST to CMC fabrication. Given the lack of an experience base in applying FAST to CMCs, MATECH proposed initiating this effort by focusing on the fundamentals. In the Navy funded Phase I Base SBIR program, centered around the development of 2700F capable SiC/SiC CMCs, MATECH demonstrated that FAST/SPS processing can be applied to final CMC densification to achieve very low porosity and high density, evidence of CMC fracture behavior and fiber pull out, and a SiC/SiC CMC with undetectable oxygen contamination (or any other contaminants).