B4C/SiC ceramic hollow microspheres prepared by slurry-coating and precursor conversion method

Abstract In this work, a new approach to fabricate B4C/SiC ceramic hollow microsphere was established through combination of slurry-coating and precursor conversion method. Firstly, different slurries were prepared using modified B4C powder with addition of PCS and LPCS. Subsequently, slurry was coated on a POM microsphere, followed by crosslinking, POM decomposition and heat-treatment at 1100 °C. Finally, the B4C/SiC hollow microspheres with average diameter of 1.6–1.9 mm and thickness of 10–60 μm were obtained. The roughness (Ra) of outer surface was as low as 40.3 nm with high sphericity of 99.6%. Deoxidation was also explored by heat treatment at 1700 °C. The oxygen content was decreased from 11.06 wt.% to 0.37 wt.%, and crush load was promoted from 1.73 N to 4.50 N. The preparative method of B4C/SiC ceramic hollow microspheres in this work can be easily extended for large-scale production.