Tantalum carbide coating via wet powder process: From slurry design to practical process tests

TaC coatings were deposited on graphite substrates via wet powder forming and sintering to potentially achieve both a highly reliable and low-cost process. Non-aqueous solvent mixtures of TaC slurries were optimized through characterization of raw materials and a novel design guide based on Hansen solubility parameters. The optimized TaC slurries enabled the formation of high-quality TaC powder compact films with ultrahigh powder packing densities of ≥70% (ca. 85% at maximum), which contributed to prevent defect formation in the TaC coatings after sintering. The TaC-coated components were tested in practical high-temperature processes, such as AlN and SiC bulk single crystal growth processes, and a SiC device fabrication process, which confirmed sufficiently low-levels of impurity incorporation and surface contamination from the TaC layers. The novel TaC-coated graphite components will contribute to higher quality and lower cost for bulk crystal growth, device fabrication, and epitaxial film growth processes of group-III nitrides and SiC.