Rheological and thermal debinding behaviors of silicon nitride in powder injection molding

摘要

In powder injection molding process, it is important to analyze the rheological and thermal debinding behaviors of feedstock, because they can directly affect the final quality of products. Therefore, for the silicon nitride based feedstocks, the rheological and thermal debinding behaviors were investigated and compared between feedstocks prepared with the combination of two types of powders and sintering aid ratios. At first, the optimal solids loading for each feedstock was determined based on the results of the torque rheometer experiment. The viscosity of the feedstocks was measured using the capillary rheometer, and rheological properties were evaluated with the Power Law-Arrhenius model. Silicon nitride (JPN) feedstock with 5 wt% yttria and 2 wt% alumina (JPN + 5Y2A) had the highest moldability index among all feedstocks. The powders with sintering aid ratio of 5 wt% yttria and 2 wt% alumina made the feedstocks have a high moldability index. Thermogravimetric experiment was also performed to analyze the pyrolysis behavior of the feedstocks, and the apparent activation energies for each feedstock were obtained using Kissinger method with the thermogravimetric analysis results. Based on the results, the master decomposition curve (MDC) was developed, and the utility of MDC for optimizing the thermal debinding process was verified.