Microstructure characterization of nanocrystalline TiC synthesized by mechanical alloying

Nanocrystalline TiC is produced by mechanical milling the stoichiometric mixture of alpha-Ti and graphite powders at room temperature under argon atmosphere within 35 min of milling through a self-propagating combustion reaction. Microstructure characterization of the unmilled and ball-milled samples was done by both X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. It reveals the fact that initially graphite layers were oriented along < 002 > and in the course of milling, thin graphite layers were distributed evenly among the grain boundaries of alpha-Ti particles. Both alpha-Ti and TiC lattices contain stacking faults of different kinds. The grain size distribution obtained from the Rietveld's method and electron microscopy studies ensure that nanocrystalline TiC particles with almost uniform size (similar to 13 nm) can be prepared by mechanical alloying technique. The result obtained from X-ray analysis corroborates well with the microstructure characterization of nanocrystalline TiC by electron microscopy. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.