Imperial College of London makes world’s most heat resistant material at 4232 kelvin

Researchers have discovered that tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide materials can withstand scorching temperatures of nearly 4000 degrees Celsius.

Being able to withstand temperatures of nearly 4000°C could pave the way for both materials to be used in ever more extreme environments, such as in heat resistant shielding for the next generation of hypersonic space vehicles.

Tantalum carbide (TaC) and hafnium carbide (HfC) are refractory ceramics, meaning they are extraordinarily resistant to heat. Their ability to withstand extremely harsh environments means that refractory ceramics could be used in thermal protection systems on high-speed vehicles and as fuel cladding in the super-heated environments of nuclear reactors. However, there hasn’t been the technology available to test the melting point of TaC and HfC in the lab to determine how truly extreme an environment they could function in.

Nature Scientific Reports – Investigating the highest melting temperature materials: A laser melting study of the TaC-HfC system

TaC, HfC and their solid solutions are promising candidate materials for thermal protection structures in hypersonic vehicles because of their very high melting temperatures (over 4000 K) among other properties. The melting temperatures of slightly hypostoichiometric TaC, HfC and three solid solution compositions (Ta1−xHfxC, with x = 0.8, 0.5 and 0.2) have long been identified as the highest known. In the current research, they were reassessed, for the first time in the last fifty years, using a laser heating technique. They were found to melt in the range of 4041–4232 K, with HfC having the highest and TaC the lowest. Spectral radiance of the hot samples was measured in situ, showing that the optical emissivity of these compounds plays a fundamental role in their heat balance. Independently, the results show that the melting point for HfC0.98, (4232 ± 84) K, is the highest recorded for any compound studied until now.

The researchers of the study, which is published in the journal Scientific Reports, developed a new extreme heating technique using lasers to test the heat tolerance of TaC and HfC. They used the laser-heating techniques to find the point at which TaC and HfC melted, both separately and as mixed compositions of both.

They found that the mixed compound (Ta0.8Hf0.20C) was consistent with previous research, melting at 3905°C, but the two compounds on their own exceeded previous recorded melting points. The compound TaC melted at 3768°C and HfC melted at 3958°C.

Space race

The researchers say the new findings could pave the way for the next generation of hypersonic vehicles, meaning spacecraft could become faster than ever.

Dr Omar Cedillos-Barraza, who is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Texas – El Paso, carried out the study while doing his PhD at Imperial’s Department of Materials.

Dr Cedillos-Barraza said: “The friction involved when travelling above Mach 5 – hypersonic speeds – creates very high temperatures. So far, TaC and HfC have not been potential candidates for hypersonic aircraft, but our new findings show that they can withstand even more heat than we previously thought – more than any other compound known to man. This means that they could be useful materials for new types of spacecraft that can fly through the atmosphere like a plane, before reaching hypersonic speeds to shoot out into space. These materials may enable spacecraft to withstand the extreme heat generated from leaving and re-entering the atmosphere.”

Examples of potential uses for TaC and HfC could be in nose caps for spacecraft, and as the edges of external instruments that have to withstand the most friction during flight.

Currently, vehicles going over Mach 5 speeds do not carry people, but Dr Cedillos-Barraza suggests it may be possible in the future.

Dr Cedillos-Barraza added: “Our tests demonstrate that these materials show real promise in the engineering of space vehicles of the future. Being able to withstand such extreme temperatures means that missions involving hypersonic spacecraft may one day be manned missions. For example, a flight from London to Sydney may take about 50 minutes at Mach 5, which could open a new world of commercial opportunities for countries around the world.”

The design of next generation hypersonic flight vehicles has raised interest in the discovery and development of materials that can operate in extreme environments. Hypersonic vehicles are equipped with sharp nose tips and leading edges to maximize flight performance. However, very high temperatures and heating rates are produced at these surfaces due to extreme velocities (over 5 Mach). Thermal protection structures are required that can operate in air at temperatures that can exceed 2200 K, thus components are required to have very high melting temperatures1,2. The extreme conditions required for hypersonic applications have introduced the motivation for research and development of high temperature materials, including a group of ceramics commonly known as ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs). A common definition of a UHTC is that of a ceramic that has a melting temperature above 3300 K. From a wide selection of materials that an engineer can choose only a limited number have melting temperatures above this criterion3. Tantalum carbide (TaC) and hafnium carbide (HfC) are of particular interest due to their high melting temperatures (over 4000 K) which are the highest reported among all known inorganic materials. They are known to form a continuous solid solution over the whole range of compositions.

Laser heating experiment consisted of four consecutive laser pulses, starting with a low-power pulse held for a long hold time (typically 1000 ms), and then the power of the subsequent pulses were increased but shortened in hold time (typically few hundreds ms). The pre-heating stage and the successive pulses were conceived to minimise thermal stresses and the risk of mechanical failure of the samples.

The results from this work show that HfC0.98 has the highest melting point in the TaC-HfC system at (4232 ± 84) K, which make it the highest melting point compound, since the melting temperature of TaC was experimentally found to be lower than HfC in this work.

In mixed compositions, a local maximum melting temperature was observed for the Ta0.8Hf0.2C, in agreement with previous research. Nevertheless, the current melting temperature of HfC0.98 remains the highest of the series. The presence of a local maximum melting temperature for mixed Hf-Ta carbides has been shown to be accompanied by a spectral emissivity effect, consistent with the existence, recently proposed by Hong and van de Walle9, of a link between the melting behavior and the Fermi level position in this kind of compounds. This should boost further experimental research on Ta-Hf-C-N compositions that might display even higher melting temperatures than those assessed for the ternary Ta-Hf-C system, in line with Hong and van de Walle’s theoretical predictions.