Analysis of contributing factors for synthesizing silicon carbide using Taguchi's approach

This study concerns the carbothermal reduction of milled amorphous silicon dioxide (SiO2) to produce silicon carbide (SiC) using Taguchi's approach. The L9(34) orthogonal design matrix was selected involving four operation specifications; temperature, mechanical milling time, heating rate and time on amorphous SiO2 under carbothermal reduction. The responses were then analysed and evaluated by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) technique. SiC yield was optimized to the highest when synthesized using amorphous SiO2 with the highest-level setting for temperature (1450°C), milling duration (100 minutes), time (180 minutes) together with the minimum heating rate of 5°C/min and only SiC formation was observed at T1400°C.