Prototype furnace reactor in Łukasiewicz – KIT

At Łukasiewicz – Krakowski Instytut Technologiczny, we have just made the next step towards a sustainable production of high performance composites for ultra-high temperature applications.

We are glad to announce that together with the AMAZEMET company, we have successfully installed a prototype furnace/reactor for designing and manufacturing composite materials by using a “hot dipping/melt infiltration” method. The reactor has been designed and built as a part of the project led by Wojciech Polkowski Ph.D. Eng. entitled “CoSMIc: Complex Concentrated Silicides fabricated by Melt Infiltration approach – a new class of ultra-high temperature materials beyond superalloys”.

In our on-going project, for the first time ever, we will adopt this technological approach to the processing of novel Refractory Metal Silicides and Refractory Complex Concentrated Alloys. Our new experimental setup offers unique possibilities for a lab-scale fabrication of metal-ceramic composites at environmental friendly pressure-less conditions and temperatures up to 1600˚C.

Basically in the “hot-dipping” approach a composite material is produced by dipping a template into a reactive molten metal at high temperature. Due to the reactive pressure-less infiltration of the molten metal, a template is densified, while new intermetallic phases are in-situ formed. A good example of industrial implementation of this process is the manufacturing of SiC/C ultra-high temperature composites for applications in the most advanced gas turbine engines. The new laboratory facility will be used to rapidly design and create a new group of materials related to high-melting, high-entropy alloys and super-hard and heat-resistant borides and silicides.

The project is funded by NCN Narodowe Centrum Nauki in the frame of OPUS22 call.

This is our next move to improve the terms of quality to work for our researchers at Łukasiewicz – Krakow Institute of Technology and we don’t intend to stop there!