A simple approach to bulk bioinspired tough ceramics

Hassan Saad (1) , Kaoutar Radi (2) , Thierry Douillard (3) , David Jauffres (2) , Christophe L Martin (2) , Sylvain Meille (3) , Sylvain Deville (1, 4)

1 LSFC - Laboratoire de Synthèse et Fonctionnalisation des Céramiques
2 SIMaP - Science et Ingénierie des Matériaux et Procédés
3 MATEIS - Matériaux, ingénierie et science [Villeurbanne]
4 iLM - L&I - iLM - Liquides et interfaces

The development of damage-resistant structural materials that can withstand harsh environments is a major issue in materials science and engineering. Bioinspired brick-and-mortar designs have recently demonstrated a range of interesting mechanical properties in proof-of-concept studies. However, reproducibility and scalability issues associated with the actual processing routes have impeded further developments and industrialization of such materials. Here we demonstrate a simple approach based on uniaxial pressing and field assisted sintering of commercially available raw materials to process bioinspired ceramic/ceramic composites of larger thickness than previous approaches, with a sample thickness up to 1 cm. The ceramic composite retains the strength typical of dense alumina (430 ± 30 MPa) while keeping the excellent damage resistance demonstrated previously at the millimeter scale with a crack initiation toughness of 6.6 MPa.m 1/2 and fracture toughness up to 17.6 MPa.m 1/2. These results validate the potential of these all-ceramic composites, previously demonstrated at lab scale only, and could enable their optimization, scale-up, and industrialization.

Mots clés: ceramics; toughness; bioinspiration; nacre; mechanical properties; damage resistance

Domaines: Matériaux

Hassan Saad, Kaoutar Radi, Thierry Douillard, David Jauffres, Christophe L Martin, et al.. A simple approach to bulk bioinspired tough ceramics. Materialia, 2020, 12, pp.100807. ⟨10.1016/j.mtla.2020.100807⟩. ⟨hal-02493649⟩