Additive manufacturing of continuous carbon fiber–reinforced silicon carbide ceramic composites

Abstract A material extrusion (MEX) technology has been developed for the additive manufacturing of continuous carbon fiber–reinforced silicon carbide ceramic (C f /SiC) composites. By comparing and analyzing the rheological properties of the slurries with different compositions, a slurry with a high solid loading of 48.1 vol% and high viscosity was proposed. Furthermore, several complex structures of C f /SiC ceramic composites were printed by this MEX additive manufacturing technique. Phenolic resin impregnation–carbonization process reduces the apparent porosity of the green body and protects the C f . Finally, the reactive melting infiltration (RMI) process was used to prepare samples with different C f contents from 0 to 2 K (a bundle of carbon fibers consisting of 1000 fibers). Samples with C f content of 1 K show the highest bending strength (161.6 ± 10.5 MPa) and fracture toughness (3.72 ± 0.11 MPa·m 1/2 ) while the thermal conductivity of the samples with the C f content of 1 K reached 11.0 W/(m·K). This study provides a strategy to prepare C f /SiC composites via MEX additive manufacturing and RMI.