Fabrication of flexible ceramic membranes derived from hard Si3N4 and soft MnO2 nanowires

Abstract

Flexible ceramic material, as a fundamental component of a toolset for the design of multifunctional materials, is very desirable, but a simple and effective preparation strategy is still missing. Herein, a flexible Si3N4/MnO2 ceramic membrane was fabricated by facile vacuum filtration progress using hard Si3N4 particles and soft ultralong MnO2 nanowires as building blocks. The Si3N4 particles were uniformly anchored into the porous flexible membrane, depending on the mechanical entanglement from ultralong MnO2 nanowires, resulting in the excellent interface stability between them. Thanks to the flexibility of MnO2 nanowires and interface stability, the as-prepared flexible membrane achieves superior flexibility including bending, folding, and twining. The flexible ceramic membrane can broaden the application range beyond the traditional ceramic use as hard structural materials. Moreover, the design strategy developed herein is applicable to other hard ceramic with similar issues.