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Silicon nitride foams with a hierarchical porous structure was formed by the combination of protein-based gelcasting, chemical vapor infiltration, and in-situ growth of silicon nitride nanowires. The porosity of the foams can be controlled at 76.3-83.8 vol% with an open porosity of 70.2-82.8 vol%. The pore size distribution was presented in three levels: < 2 μm (voids among grains and cross overlapping of silicon nitride nanowires (SNNWs)), 10-50 μm (cell windows), and >100 μm (cells). The resulted compressive strength of the porous bodies at room temperature can achieve up to 18.0±1.0 MPa (porosity = 76.3 vol%) while the corresponding retention rate at 800 ℃ was 58.3%. Gas permeability value was measured to be 5.16 (cm3·cm)/(cm2·s·kPa). The good strength, high permeability together with the pore structure in multiple scales enabled the foam materials for microparticle infiltration applications.


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Formation of hierarchical Si3N4 foams by protein-based gelcasting and chemical vapor infiltration

Show Author's information Junsheng LIQiuping YUDuan LI( )Liang ZENGShitao GAO
Science and Technology on Advanced Ceramic Fibers and Composites Laboratory, College of Aerospace Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China

Abstract

Silicon nitride foams with a hierarchical porous structure was formed by the combination of protein-based gelcasting, chemical vapor infiltration, and in-situ growth of silicon nitride nanowires. The porosity of the foams can be controlled at 76.3-83.8 vol% with an open porosity of 70.2-82.8 vol%. The pore size distribution was presented in three levels: < 2 μm (voids among grains and cross overlapping of silicon nitride nanowires (SNNWs)), 10-50 μm (cell windows), and >100 μm (cells). The resulted compressive strength of the porous bodies at room temperature can achieve up to 18.0±1.0 MPa (porosity = 76.3 vol%) while the corresponding retention rate at 800 ℃ was 58.3%. Gas permeability value was measured to be 5.16 (cm3·cm)/(cm2·s·kPa). The good strength, high permeability together with the pore structure in multiple scales enabled the foam materials for microparticle infiltration applications.

Keywords: ceramics, sintering, porosity, mechanical properties, permeability

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Publication history
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Publication history

Received: 03 September 2020
Revised: 03 October 2020
Accepted: 26 October 2020
Published: 18 January 2021
Issue date: February 2021

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2020

Acknowledgements

We acknowledged the financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2017JJ3353) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.51702361).

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