Background

Industry – Defense

Materials Used:

Graphite
IJ Research metallization formula

Requirement:

To metallize graphite for structural bonding of ceramic to graphite.

Challenges:

Graphite exhibits poor bonding to many materials. Often in braze processing, industry uses graphite tooling to mitigate the bonding of molten metal and parts can be easily removable from a graphite the tool. This is also the case for the glass sealing industry.

The goal was to metallize the graphite for subsequent high temperature brazing. For many years, the customer tried to develop a metallization using various materials and none of them showed any meaningful bonding strength to the graphite. During their subsequent brazing, the metallization came off or delaminated. The question was what material to be used and how to process.

Solution:

We needed to offer two features. First, a bonding mechanism of metallization over graphite. Second, to offer a braze ability in the subsequent processing at customer’s facility. After 6 months of R & D at IJ Research, we delivered prototypes for their qualification evaluation and their test was very successful in terms of the bonding strength and subsequent brazing. IJ Research has been a qualified source for their defense application ever since. The process has been well established with over two decades of regularly scheduled deliveries.