Development and Industrial Application of Silicon Nitride Based Ceramics

摘要

Due to its very specific assembly of material properties, silicon nitride has gained a lot of interest in the past 20 years. Many new approaches in technical equipment like gas turbine engines, motor engines, cooking systems, bearings, cutting tools, substrates and many more were undertaken with corresponding research activities. However, except of bearings and cutting tools, none of these expected high volume application went into industrial production. On the other side, many less spectacular applications are state of the art today and have opened a wide field for niche parts and lead to new technical solutions with higher service time, less wear and corrosion and improved product properties. In this paper, the properties of gas pressure sintered silicon nitride as well as the production procedure are described shortly. A wide range of application examples are given, to show the state of the art in technical application of silicon nitride and its further potential.