Artículos SCI

Porous biomorphic SiC ceramics were fabricated from four different wood precursors, three natural woods and one recycled wood product, by reactive infiltration of molten silicon into a carbon preform obtained from wood pyrolysis. Sliding wear resistance when sliding against a Si3N4 ball in air was studied. Tribological experiments were done with a pin-on-disk apparatus, under normal loads of 1 and 2 N, at a sliding velocity of 100 mm/s. The wear properties and the volume fraction of porosity were correlated. A commercial sintered SiC ceramic was also tested for comparison. The measured values of friction coefficient were in the range reported in literature for monolithic SiC ceramics under similar dry contact conditions. Two concurrent wear mechanisms are taking place: abrasion from the SiC debris and soft ploughing. The presence of an oxide tribolayer was assessed using energy dispersive X-ray analysis. Wear rates were found to scale with the composite porosity.

This work describes an in-situ Nd:YAG laser-assisted coating method to modify industrial glazed ceramic surfaces. The method makes use of a Cu polymer coordination complex, transformed via 1064 nm continuos wave (cw) laser irradiation, into a lustre-type glassy coating covering the ceramic substrate. The obtained coatings, with typical thicknesses ranging between 4 and 14 μm, become integrated onto the ceramic glaze via a sharp interface, as found by SEM observation. Diffuse Reflectance UV-vis spectroscopy shows that the lustre effect arises from surface plasmon resonant effects associated to the formation of nanometric size Cu particles dispersed throughout the glaze coating. This was confirmed by XPS analysis and other techniques showing that the laser decomposition treatment induces the redox transformation of the Cu (II) complexes, present in the original precursor, into reduced Cu (0) nanoparticles.