High-Temperature Oxidation-Resistant ZrN0.4B0.6/SiC Nanohybrid for Enhanced Microwave Absorption

Xian Jian; Wei Tian; Jinyao Li; Longjiang Deng; Zuowan Zhou; Li Zhang; Haipeng Lu; Liangjun Yin; Nasir Mahmood

doi:10.1021/acsami.8b22448

High-Temperature Oxidation-Resistant ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC Nanohybrid for Enhanced Microwave Absorption

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 May 1;11(17):15869-15880. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b22448. Epub 2019 Apr 19.

Authors

Xian Jian^{1

2}, Wei Tian¹, Jinyao Li¹, Longjiang Deng², Zuowan Zhou³, Li Zhang², Haipeng Lu², Liangjun Yin^{1

2}, Nasir Mahmood⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials and Energy, Center for Applied Chemistry , University of Electronic Science and Technology of China , Chengdu 611731 , China.
² National Engineering Research Center of Electromagnetic Radiation Control Materials, State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices , University of Electronic Science and Technology of China , Chengdu 610054 , China.
³ Key Laboratory of Advanced Technologies of Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering , Southwest Jiaotong University , Chengdu 610031 , China.
⁴ School of Engineering , RMIT University , 124 La Trobe Street , 3001 Melbourne , Victoria , Australia.

PMID: 30957489
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b22448

Abstract

Most microwave absorbers lose their function under harsh working conditions, such as a high temperature and an oxidative environment. Here, we developed a heterogeneous ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC nanohybrid via combined catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) and chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) processes using ZrB₂ as the starting material. The composition and structure of the ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC nanohybrid were controlled by tuning the CCVD and CVI parameters, such as reaction temperature, time, and reactant concentration. The optimal heterogeneous ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC nanohybrids were obtained initially by preparing ZrB₂@C via the CCVD process at 650 °C for 30 min and the subsequent CVI at 1500 °C, where the ZrB₂@C reacted with Si under N₂. The ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC nanohybrid exhibited enhanced microwave absorption ability with a minimum reflection loss value of approximately -50.8 dB at 7.7 GHz, a thickness of ∼3.05 mm, and antioxidation features at a high temperature of 600 °C. The heterogeneous ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC nanohybrid possessed reasonable conductivity, leading to dielectric loss, whereas SiC nanofibers formed a three-dimensional network that brought higher dipole moments, whereas a small part of the ZrN_0.4B_0.6/SiC nanohybrid structure generated an effective interface for higher attenuation of microwaves. Therefore, these material features synergistically resulted in a well-defined Debye relaxation, Maxwell-Wagner relaxation, dipole polarization, and the quarter-wavelength cancellation, which accounted for the enhanced microwave absorption.

Keywords: ZrN0.4B0.6; catalytic chemical vapor deposition; chemical vapor infiltration; microwave absorption; silicon carbide.