Chemical vapor infiltration

Chemical vapour infiltration (CVI) is a ceramic engineering process whereby matrix material is infiltrated into fibrous preforms by the use of reactive gases at elevated temperature to form fiber-reinforced composites. The earliest use of CVI was the infiltration of fibrous alumina with chromium carbide. CVI can be applied to the production of carbon-carbon composites and ceramic matrix composites. A similar technique is chemical vapour deposition (CVD), the main difference being that the deposition process of CVD is on hot bulk surfaces, while the deposition process of CVI is on porous substrates.