Thermodynamical modeling of silicon carbide synthesis in thermal plasma

Abstract

The synthesis process of solid SiC in thermal plasma was investigated theoretically by computing the equilibrium composition of the gas mixtures involving silicon and carbon in the presence of argon and hydrogen at various silicon/carbon amounts and at two different total pressures in the system, in the temperature range between 1000 and 6000 K. Use is made of the fact that a thermal plasma, by definition, is a plasma in (local) thermodynamical equilibrium, which makes possible the theoretical determination of its equilibrium composition at definite temperature by employing Gibbs free energy data for the compounds present in the system. From the calculated compositions of the investigated gas systems the temperature-composition phase diagrams were obtained. Using these data the temperature zones with saturated and/or oversaturated vapour of SiC as well as of Si and C were determined and the possibility of the formation of SiC in the solid state via different reaction routes was analyzed.