Chemical reaction of in-situ processing of NiAl/Al2O3 composite by using thermite reaction

NiAl/Al2O3 composite were synthesized by thermite reaction of nickel oxide and aluminum power mixtures. The phase, the microstructure of the composite, as well as the thermite reaction mechanism, were investigated by X- ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The experimental results show that the thermite reaction, leads to the interpenetrating network structure NiAl/Al2O3 at 1223K for 60 min and the chemical reaction apparent activation energy is E-ap = 166.960 +/- 13.496 kj . mol(-1) in the NiO/Al system.