Synthesis mechanism of titanium carbide nano-fiber during self-propagating high temperature synthesis

Titanium carbide nano-fiber was synthesized by self-propagating high temperature synthesis (SHS) method. The final products after the SHS reaction were titanium carbide containing excess carbon and metallic titanium, which were removed by additional leaching process. TEM observation revealed that the average diameter is about 20 nm. Neutron diffraction analysis was carried out to study non-stoichiometric number of the titanium carbide. The non-stoichiometric numbers of the titanium carbide were 0.89–0.94. The Rietveld refinement of each patterns converged to good agreement (÷2=0.49–1.34). The formation mechanism of the carbide is related to a liquid-solid reaction including the preferential diffusion process of carbon atom into liquid titanium. This article is based on a presentation made in the 2002 Korea-US symposium on the “Phase Transformations of Nano-Materials,” organized as a special program of the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials, held at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea on October 25–26, 2002.