Heat-Resistant Inorganic Fibers

Abstract

Up to now, many types of inorganic fibers have been developed. The main purpose is to develop composite materials with lightweight and high fracture toughness. Of these, carbon fiber has already established a very big market. By the way, representative oxide fibers (alumina/silica-based fibers) show heat-resistance’s limitation at around 1200°C. In order to improve the heat-resistance, some types of eutectic oxide-fibers have been studied. On the other hand, SiC fibers with both heat-resistance and oxidation-resistance were developed over 30 years ago. After that, lots of improvements have been performed, and finally several types of excellent heat-resistant SiC-polycrystalline fibers, which can be used up to about 1800°C, were developed from polycarbosilane. Using these fibers, lots of applications have been considered in the fields of aerospace, nuclear system, and so on. Furthermore, making the best use of the aforementioned production process, several types of functional ceramic fibers with gradient-like functional surface layers also have been developed. In this paper, of these inorganic fibers, heat-resistant SiC fibers will be addressed along with historical view point on ceramic fibers.