Structure, Morphology, Heat Capacity, and Electrical Transport Properties of Ti₃(Al,Si)C₂ Materials

A study of Ti₃Al_1-SiC₂ (x = 0 to x = 1) MAX-phase alloys is reported. The materials were obtained from mixtures of Ti₃AlC₂ and Ti₃SiC₂ powders with hot pressing sintering technique. They were characterised with X-ray diffraction, heat capacity, electrical resistivity, and magnetoresistance measurements. The results show a good quality crystal structure and metallic properties with high residual resistivity. The resistivity weakly varies with Si doping and shows a small, positive magnetoresistance effect. The magnetoresistance exhibits a quadratic dependence on the magnetic field, which indicates a dominant contribution from open electronic orbits. The Debye temperatures and Sommerfeld coefficient values derived from specific heat data show slight variations with Si content, with decreasing tendency for the former and an increase for the latter. Experimental results were supported by band structure calculations whose results are consistent with the experiment concerning specific heat, resistivity, and magnetoresistance measurements. In particular, they reveal that of the s-electrons at the Fermi level, those of Al and Si have prevailing density of states and, thus predominantly contribute to the metallic conductivity. This also shows that the high residual resistivity of the materials studied is an intrinsic effect, not due to defects of the crystal structure.