Advanced bonding techniques for the automotive industry

Silicon carbide has long been used as an abrasive thanks to its extreme hardness and has more recently found applications in body armour and in brake discs for luxury cars made by the likes of Porsche and Ferrari. But a new method of bonding this fairly inert material, originally developed for building equipment for cutting-edge physics experiments in space, could enable its use in new areas that require precision manufacturing - and the researchers who have created it are making it available free of charge to commercial organisations.

A team from Glasgow University, led by professor of experimental physics Dr Sheila Rowan, has developed the new method of hydroxide catalysis or ’silicate’ bonding based on work originally carried out by Dr Jason Gwo of Stanford University in California.

’Silicon carbide is very hard and very tough,’ said Dr Christian Killow, a Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) fellow from Glasgow University’s Institute of Gravitational Research, who worked on the project. ’It’s quite brittle but it’s very good at absorbing impact. The problem with silicon carbide is that it’s fairly inert. It just kind of sits there and does nothing, so when you want to stick something to it it’s not very easy to do.’