The invention relates to hydrocarbon conversion, to equipment and materials useful for hydrocarbon conversion, and to processes for carrying out hydrocarbon conversion, e.g., hydrocarbon pyrolysis processes. The hydrocarbon conversion is carried out in a reactor which includes at least one channeled member that comprises refractory and has an open frontal area 55%. The refractory can include non-oxide ceramic.

A toughened ceramic material includes at least one boride and a refractory metal, or at least two borides, one carbide at least, and a refractory metal. The toughened ceramic material is by means of heating and smelting the above materials. During the process of preparing the toughened ceramic material by heating and smelting, substantially all the refractory metal reacts with the boride and/or the carbide to form a toughened ceramic material with a high toughness and substantially without metallic cemented phase.

A shaping method includes irradiating a powder containing silicon carbide and metal boride with an energy beam based on shape data of an object of shaping to perform shaping, in which the metal boride has a melting point lower than the sublimation point of the silicon carbide.

The invention presents a near-infrared photothermal coupling curing non-oxide ceramic slurry, along with its preparation method and application. The ceramic slurry consists of various raw materials, with weight fractions as follows: non-oxide ceramic powder (40?90 parts), photosensitive resin (0.5?20 parts), photosensitive monomer (1?40 parts), photoinitiator (0.25?4 parts), thermal initiator (0.25?4 parts), additive (0.75?5 parts), and up-conversion luminescent material (0.5?4 parts). The non-oxide ceramic powders can include Si.sub.3N.sub.4, TiN, BN, AlN, SiC, WC, TiC, ZrC, TiB.sub.2, and ZrB.sub.2. By combining the photochemical and photothermal dual curing system using near-infrared up-conversion, this invention addresses the issue of insufficient curing encountered in single photocuring or thermal curing processes. Moreover, by incorporating near-infrared light source-driven additive manufacturing, it enables rapid prototyping of high-solid-content non-oxide ceramic slurry, ultimately allowing for the fabrication of high-fidelity non-oxide ceramic structures.

Disclosed is a method of making high temperature fiber including chemically bonding high temperature material to a fiber template at a first temperature to form a precursor fiber and processing the precursor fiber at a second temperature to form the high temperature fiber. The first temperature does not equal the second temperature. Also disclosed are high temperature fibers made by the method.

The present invention relates to a process for the production of fiber-reinforced composite materials with an ultra-refractory, high tenacity, high ablation resistant matrix with self-healing properties, prepared from highly sinterable slurries. The composite material is produced using techniques of infiltration and drying at ambient pressure or under vacuum, and consolidated by sintering with or without the application of gas or mechanical pressure.

A composite material having a grainy appearance, this composite material including a metal matrix which represents, in terms of volume fraction, between 50 and 95% of the grainy composite material, the ceramic particles having a diameter that lies in the range 0.1 to 2 mm and which represent, in terms of volume fraction, between 50 and 5% of the composite material are dispersed in the metal matrix and form the remainder of this grainy composite material. A method for manufacturing a grainy synthetic material.

In order to provide a zirconium boride that provides high caloric value at the time of its combustion with a compound having radicals such as perchlorate and can combust in a short period of time, while providing high physical stability, an amount of radical derived from lattice defect detected by ESR spectroscopy, is set to 0.110.sup.15 spin/mg or more.

Composites having the composition of at least one principal strengthening phase compound and one cemented phase of principal refractory metal are disclosed. The components of the strengthening phase compound can be a boride or a mixture of a boride and one or more than one carbide. In addition, the composites are obtained by smelting the principal strengthening phase compound and the cemented phase principal refractory metal in a non-equal molar ratio.

A hypersonic refractory material, including a refractory leading edge portion for a hypersonic vehicle and a high emissivity oxide coating adhered to the refractory leading edge portion. The high emissivity oxide coating is ZrB.sub.2 doped with a cation dopant material selected from the group including Sm, Tm, and mixtures thereof. The cation dopant material is present in a concentration of between 3 mole percent and 8 mole percent.