Investigation of Bio-Inspired Hybrid Materials through Polymer Infiltration of Thermal Spray Formed Ceramic Templates

High strength and toughness are often mutually exclusive in engineered materials. This is especially true of ceramics and polymers. Ceramics exhibit high strength and stiffness, but are brittle while polymers are flaw tolerant but prone to deformation at low stresses. Nature overcomes this restriction in materials by strategically combining brittle components with tough organics, leading to materials with both a high strength and toughness. One of the most impressive natural composites is nacre consisting of mainly a brittle mineral phase, 95vol% calcium carbonate (aragonite), and 5vol% biopolymer (a combination of proteins and polysaccahrides). Nature combines constituents with poor macroscale properties and achieves levels that surpass those expected despite being formed of mostly mineral CaCO3 tablets. Interestingly, nacreous assemblies can display a toughness 3,000 times higher than their major constituent, aragonite. Similarities have been observed between nacre and sprayed ceramics in terms of their microstructures and mechanical behavior. Both assemblies follow a design hierarchy and layered organization over several length scales. The mineral phase in nacre has evolved on the microscale and nanometer interlayers of biopolymer bond neighboring tablets. In addition, these tablets have a certain degree of waviness, nanoscale roughness, and mineral bridges thereby further enhancing linkages to one another. These inherent microstructural features significantly improve the mechanical properties of nacreous assemblies. On the other hand, sprayed ceramics are formed from micron sized splats, larger than aragonite nacreous tablets, with comparable (nanoscale) roughness, resulting from grain termination sites. Together these features of sprayed ceramics respond similarly to nacre, showing a great extent of mechanical nonlinearity and hysteresis, which is mostly absent in structural ceramics. Due to the splat-by-splat deposition process, sprayed ceramics contain a certain degree of porosity (up to approximately 20%). Often, porosity is interconnected and is controlled by varying processing parameters. Through the introduction of an appropriate polymer at the porosity interface, it may be possible to achieve synergistic benefits in terms of both strength and toughness of the sprayed material. This dissertation will focus on the fabrication and evaluation of property enhancements of bio-inspired materials based on ceramic thermally sprayed scaffolds through post deposition polymer impregnation. | 200 pages