FGMs have been fabricated using the combustion synthesis (or self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS)) process by exploiting a rapid and exothermic chemical reaction, in order to synthesize some (or all) of the constituents in an FGM to simultaneously increase its density. The thermal energy required to drive the process is derived from this internal, chemical source, rather than from an external and usually expensive source (e.g., a furnace). The combustion synthesis process is a powder-based process that has been used to synthesize over 300 compounds, and is particularly useful in preparing materials such as highly refractory ceramics and high-temperature intermetallics that are difficult to prepare by other synthesis methods. In addition, the process can be used to prepare ceramic-metal and ceramic-intermetallic composite materials. As a result, only slight modifications of the combustion synthesis are required to prepare functionally gradient materials from these same combinations of materials.Sample preparation begins by the creation of a series of mixtures from the powders that will react to form the constituent materials of the FGM sample. Each of these mixtures contains a slightly different percentage of reactants, so that each mixture will yield its own (predetermined) volume fraction of each of its constituents, following the combustion synthesis process. Prior to the combustion step, the samples are assembled by stacking layers of each of the reactant powder mixtures in appropriate amounts, in such a way that the multilayered powder mixture will faithfully produce the composition gradient that is required in the resultant FGM.
High-Temperature Synthesis of Metal–Matrix Composites (Ni-Ti)-TiB2
