Highly electromagnetic transparent ceramic composite made of boron nitride nanotubes and silicon oxynitride via perhydropolysilazane infiltration method

Ni Yang; Shaofan Xu; Chengying Xu

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-18563-4

Highly electromagnetic transparent ceramic composite made of boron nitride nanotubes and silicon oxynitride via perhydropolysilazane infiltration method

Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 23;12(1):14374. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-18563-4.

Authors

Ni Yang¹, Shaofan Xu¹, Chengying Xu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NC State University, Raleigh, NC, 27607, USA.
² Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NC State University, Raleigh, NC, 27607, USA. cheryl.xu@ncsu.edu.

Abstract

With the rapid development of electromagnetic (EM) wave circuit devices, high-performance wave-transparent materials with various functions have attracted great attention. Ceramic material is a promising candidate to be applied in harsh environments because of its chemical and corrosion resistance. In this work, a polymer-derived route was adopted to synthesize ceramic composite at room temperature. The composite is made of perhydropolysilazane-derived SiON ceramic and reinforced with boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) sheets. With the addition of SiON ceramic materials, the resultant sample showed an excellent hydrophobicity with a contact angle of 135-146.9°. More importantly, superior thermal stability at 1600 °C in the oxygen-containing atmosphere was observed for the fabricated SiON/BNNTs sample, without any shape change. The electromagnetic transparency of the SiON/BNNTs was studied through the waveguide method. The prepared SiON/BNNTs sample has an average real permittivity between 1.52 and 1.55 and an average loss tangent value in the range of 0.0074-0.0266, at the frequency range of 26.5-40 GHz. The effect of thickness on the wave transparency of SiON/BNNTs samples is also discussed. To summarize the aforementioned superior characterization and measurement results, the presented SiON/BNNTs material system has a great potential to be used as EM transparent materials in harsh conditions.