Fabrication and Microstructure Study of Amorphous SiC Microsphere for ICF

The amorphous silicon carbide (SiC) microsphere with wall thickness of about 21 μm was successfully fabricated by chemical vapor deposition-pyrolysis, using TMS+T₂B+H₂ as the precursor gases. The chemical composition, structure and properties of SiC microsphere were studied by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, white light interferometer and X-ray camera. The results show that the silicon doped carbon-hydrogen polymer coating deposited on PAMS can be converted to dense SiC microsphere via the pyrolysis and densification process during 450-900 ℃ in the anaerobic environment. The fabricated SiC microsphere is amorphous and it mainly contains C—Si bonds and C=C bonds with C/Si atomic ratio of about 1.3. The microstructure of SiC is irregular and its particle distribution is uniform. In addition, it is also found that the density, spherical degree and wall thickness uniformity of SiC microsphere are computed to be 2.62 g/cm³, 99.8% and 96.8%, respectively.