Abstract
Owing to their exceptional stiffness and strength1−4, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long been considered to be an ideal reinforcement for light-weight, high-strength, and high-temperature-resistant ceramic matrix composites (CMCs)5−10. However, the research and development in CNT-reinforced CMCs have been greatly hindered due to the challenges related to manufacturing including poor dispersion, damages during dispersion, surface modification, densification and sintering, weak tube/matrix interfaces, and agglomeration of tubes at the matrix grain boundaries5,11. Here we report the fabrication of high-quality aligned CNT/SiC composites by chemical vapor infiltration (CVI), a technique that is being widely used to fabricate commercial continuous-filament CMCs12−15. Using the CVI technique most of the challenges previously encountered in the fabrication of CNT composites were readily overcome. Nanotube pullouts, an important toughening mechanism for CMCs, were consistently observed on all fractured CNT/SiC samples. Indeed, three-point bending tests conducted on individual CNT/SiC nanowires (diameters: 50−200 nm) using an atomic force microscope show that the CNT-reinforced SiC nanowires are about an order of magnitude tougher than the bulk SiC. The tube/matrix interface is so intimate and the SiC matrix is so dense that a ~50-nm-thick SiC coating can effectively protect the inside nanotubes from being oxidized at 1600 °C in air. The CVI method may be extended to produce nanotube composites from a variety of matrix
