CREEP-BEHAVIOR OF A SINTERED SILICON-NITRIDE

A commercial sintered silicon nitride has been crept in bending and compression at temperatures of 1100-degrees-C to 1400-degrees-C. In the as-sintered condition the material contains an amorphous intergranular phase. This phase undergoes partial devitrification as a result of high temperature exposure. Preannealing the material to a stable microstructure has very little effect on the creep properties. Deformation behavior compares well with that predicted from a model for creep due to viscous flow of a non-Newtonian grain boundary phase. In bending, the model predicts an initial constant strain rate at low strains as the intergranular phase is squeezed out from between grains under compression. Samples crept in compression are not expected to have this same initial constant strain rate regime. The model also predicts a strong initial strain rate dependence (in bending) on the initial thickness of the amorphous grain boundary layer. Experimentally this strain rate is not affected by partial grain boundary crystallization, suggesting that partial devitrification does not alter the intergranular film thickness or viscosity. This is supported by transmission electron microscopy, which has shown that crystallization of the intergranular phase occurs largely in the pockets between grains, leaving amorphous films between grains.