Abstract
Engineering ceramics have high stiffness, excellent thermostability, and relatively lowdensity, but their brittleness impedes their use as structural materials. Incorporatingcarbon nanotubes (CNTs) into a brittle ceramic might be expected to provideCNT/ceramic composites with both high toughness and high temperature stability. Untilnow, however, materials fabrication difficulties have limited research on CNT/ceramiccomposites. The mechanical failure of CNT/ceramic composites reported previously isprimarily attributed to poor CNT–matrix connectivity and severe phase segregation. Herewe show that a novel processing approach based on the precursor method can diminish thephase segregation of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), and renderMWCNT/alumina composites highly homogeneous. The MWCNTs used in thisstudy are modified with an acid treatment. Combined with a mechanical interlockinduced by the chemically modified MWCNTs, this approach leads to improvedmechanical properties. Mechanical measurements reveal that only 0.9 vol% acid-treatedMWCNT addition results in 27% and 25% simultaneous increases in bending strength(689.6 ± 29.1 MPa) andfracture toughness (5.90 ± 0.27 MPa m1/2), respectively.
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