A STUDY ON SINTERING BEHAVIORS OF COPPER COATED SIC COMPOSITE POWDERS FABRICATED BY ELECTROLESS PLATING AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF THE CONSOLIDATED COMPOSITES

Copper coated sic powders having three different amounts of copper. in the range of20-60 wt%, were prepared via electroless coating process. the produced composite powders wereuniaxially cold compressed and sintered at different temperatures and times under protectiveatmosphere. it was found that composite cu/sic powders and a relatively dense copper matrixcomposite with a uniform distribution ofsic reinforcing particles imbedded in copper matrix canbe fabricated via electroless coating methodfollowed by conventional coldpressing and sinteringprocess. the results also show that sic particles have a poor wettability with copper and so liquidphase sintering of the cu/sic composite powders did not enhance densification of the samples.regarding this fact, optimum sintering temperatures, which depends on copper content, wasdetermined to be in the range of1050-1080 dc.