Thermal and electrical properties of spark plasma sintered (Ti,Cr)B2 ceramics

Thermal and electrical properties were measured for TiB2 ceramics containing varying CrB2 contents up to 33 mol%. The room-temperature thermal diffusivity decreased with increasing Cr content from 0.330 ± 0.003 cm2/s for pure TiB2 to 0.060 ± 0.003 cm2/s for (Ti0.66Cr0.33)B2. The amount of anisotropy in the coefficients of thermal expansion increased with increasing Cr content and the c-axis had the greatest dependence on Cr addition, with an increase of more than 25% in the thermal expansion for 33 mol% CrB2 compared to TiB2, whereas the a-axis only increased by about 8%. The electrical conductivity was the lowest for (Ti0.66Cr0.33)B2 at ∼8.5 × 103 S/cm compared to ∼106.1 × 103 S/cm for nominally pure TiB2. Overall, the addition of CrB2 as a sintering aid for TiB2 was shown to have a significant effect on the thermal and electrical properties of TiB2 for additions as small as 5 mol% CrB2.