Carbide Information Center

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American Elements' manufacturing emphasizes production of carbide materials including Boron Carbide, Cobalt Carbide, Chromium Carbide, Hafnium Carbide, Molybdenum Carbide, Niobium Carbide, Tantalum Carbide, Titanium Carbide, Vanadium Carbide and Zirconium Carbide. Carbides are compounds in which the anion is one or more carbon atoms. Most metals form carbide compounds, though not all. Indium and Gallium, for example, do not.

Like diamond, a pure carbon compound, Carbide compounds tend to be extremely hard, refractory and resistant to wear, corrosion and heat, making them excellent candidates for coatings for drills and other tools. They often have other valuable properties in combination with toughness, such as electrical conductivity, low thermal expansion and abrasiveness.

Metallic carbide materials are marketed under the tradename AE Carbides™. Some interesting characteristics and applications of a few carbides include:

Chromium Carbide. A typical example of a carbide compound that combines the refractory and hardness of carbides with some other property attributable to the cation. In this case, the anti-corrosive properties of chromium. Chromium carbide is used extensively in aerospace materials, high temperature drilling parts, welding electrodes and in other high temperature corrosive environments.

Hafnium Carbide. Combining the high refractive index of both the element hafnium and of carbides generally, HfC is the most refractory simple binary compound with a melting temperature of 3,890 ºC.

Silicon Carbide. Combines the refractory and hardness of carbides with high thermal conductivity creating a stiff low thermal expansion material.

Tungsten Carbide. The most commonly used of the carbides is tungsten carbide which when combined with cobalt carbide and/or titanium carbide, niobium carbide, chromium carbide and tantalum carbide produces the hardest and least costly cutting drills and tools.

Boron Carbide. An extremely light, hard and versatile material used extensively in grinding media as an abrasive, in lightweight ceramic parts and as a neutron "getter" in parts for nuclear reactors.

Zirconium Carbide. Another one of the refractory group of metals, Zirconium, generally finds applications in its oxide form in ceramic materials and as the carbide also has many potential uses in hard heat resistant ceramics. It has the additional characteristic of being electronically conductive.

A complete list of AE Carbides™ line of metallic carbide materials includes