Slip casting and pressureless sintering of Ti3AlC2

Slip casting and subsequent pressureless sintering (PLS) allow the preparation of complex-shaped and large-sized Ti 3 AlC 2 components for many potential applications. The behaviors of the suspensions, green compacts, and sintered samples of Ti 3 AlC 2 were studied in this paper. The optimized condition of 1 wt% of arabic gum as dispersant at pH = 10 results in a Ti 3 AlC 2 suspension for slip casting Ti 3 AlC 2 green compacts without macro defects or cracks. The sintering temperature and A1 4 C 3 embedding powder are found to dominate the properties of the sintered Ti 3 AlC 2 samples. The Ti 3 AlC 2 sample sintered at 1450 °C for 1.5 h with A1 4 C 3 embedding powder reaches the best properties, namely 95.3% relative density, hardness of 4.18 GPa, thermal conductivity of 29.11 W·m −1 K −1 , and electrical resistivity of 0.39 μΩ·m. The findings in this work may pave the way for the application of MAX phases with large size and complex shape