Porous Si3N4 ceramics prepared by aqueous gelcasting using low–toxicity DMAA system: Regulatable microstructure and properties by monomer content

Abstract

In this study, the low–toxicity monomer N, N–dimethylacrylamide (DMAA), serving as both gelling agent and pore–forming agent, was adopted to fabricate porous Si3N4 ceramics with a regulatable microstructure and property by aqueous gelcasting. Results indicate that monomer content played an important role in regulating and optimizing the properties of sintered bodies. With increasing monomer content (5.94–30.69 wt%), both slurry viscosity (maximum 0.14 Pa s at 95.40 s−1) and green body strength (11.35–49.23 MPa) exhibited monotonic increasing trends, demonstrating superior mechanical properties to those obtained using the neurovirulent acrylamide (AM) gelling system. The increased monomer content not only improved porosity, but also promoted α→β–Si3N4 transformation as well as β–Si3N4 grain growth through enhancing the connectivity of interlocking pores and accelerating the vapor phase transport during liquid–phase sintering. These variations in phase composition and microstructure derived from the varied monomer content further resulted in monotonic changes in porosity (40.32–51.50%), mean pore size (0.27–0.38 μm), flexural strength (202.77–132.15 MPa), fracture toughness (2.93–2.32 MPa m1/2), dielectric constant (3.48–2.78) and loss (3.52–3.09 × 10−3) at 10 GHz for sintered bodies, displaying an excellent comprehensive properties. This study suggests a promising prospect for DMAA in preparation of high–performance porous Si3N4 ceramics by aqueous gelcasting.