in an evaporating dish on a hotplate the dried blend can be stored indefinitely if desired the blend is placed in a heated high shear mixer in which it is mixed to the consistency of very thick dough a trace of a viscosity control agent is added to thin the blend to a more workable consistency 6 g portions of the blend are injected into an injection mold then released therefrom the resulting near net shape green body is placed on a refractory tray and passed though an nitrogen atmosphere in a 3 u2032 0 9 m tube furnace a the rate of about 35 mm per minute the temperature near the center of the tube being 2050 to 2150 u00b0 c in summary then this invention provides a rapid method of doping silicon carbide in such a way as to produce an essentially fully dense single phase electrically conductive article saturated with the dopant the invention has the advantage that one can fabricate an electrically stable and mechanically strong igniter at a minimum of expense the rapidity of the process allows one to minimize the exposure time of the article to the highest process temperatures the brevity of this exposure results in an article exhibiting little or no grain growth which would adversely affect the quality of the finished article silicon carbide grain sizes in the finished article are similar to the initial silicon carbide particle sizes in particular submicron silicon carbide particles yield a finished article with grains less than 1 micron across the fabrication process is enabled by a convergence of scale factors namely the relatively small furnace size which allows close temperature control the low thermal masses of the articles being made which permit their rapid heating and.