The Effect of Boron Content on Wetting Kinetics in Si-B Alloy/h-BN System

In this work, the effect of boron content on the high temperature wetting behavior in the Si-B alloy/h-BN systems was experimentally examined. For this reason, hypoeutectic, eutectic and hypereutectic Si-B alloys (Si-1B, Si-3.2B and Si-5.7B wt %, respectively) were produced by electric arc melting method, and then subjected to sessile drop/contact heating experiments with polycrystalline h-BN substrates, at temperatures up to 1750°C. Similar to pure Si/h-BN system, wetting kinetics curves calculated on a basis of in-situ recorded drop/substrate images point towards non-wetting behavior of all selected Si-B alloy/h-BN couples. The highest contact angle values of ~150° were obtained for hypoeutectic and eutectic Si-B alloys in the whole examined temperature range.