Patent ID: 7378362

Claim:
A composite material fabricated by a process comprising: a) forming a fibrous structure comprising carbon, polyacrylonitrile, or rayon fibers into a preform; b) impregnating the preform with elemental carbon to initially predominantly coat the fibers of the fibrous structure; c) infiltrating the preform with a ceramic slurry to predominantly impregnate the fibers of the preform to form an impregnated green body; d) infiltrating the impregnated green body with a liquid carbon precursor and pyrolyzing the liquid carbon precursor to form a carbon char; e) infiltrating the impregnated green body with molten silicon to form a continuous matrix throughout the composite; and f) reacting silicon in the continuous matrix with the carbon char to form silicon carbide, wherein said silicon carbide has a grain size of less than about 20 microns and said composite material has less than 5 volume % residual silicon.