Formation of Ultra-High Temperature Ceramic Hollow Microspheres as Promising Lightweight Thermal Insulation Materials via a Molten Salt-Assisted Template Method

Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) have become a vital candidate material system for thermal protection systems in aerospace applications. However, high thermal conductivity and high density are the main obstacles to the application of UHTCs. It is a promising solution to prepare porous UHTCs using UHTC hollow microspheres (HMs) as a pore-forming agent. In this work, UHTC (ZrC, TiC, and HfC) HMs are successfully synthesized using carbon hollow microspheres (CHMs) as a template to react with metal powders in molten salt. The diameter of ZrC HMs is about 1 μm and the wall thickness is about 100 nm. The density of each microsphere and the volume fraction of ZrC are 3.36 g/cm³ and 48.42 vol %, respectively. The morphology, microstructure, and phase composition of the obtained ZrC HMs were characterized. The formation mechanism of the UHTC HMs was discussed. Porous ZrC ceramics were prepared using ZrC HMs as a pore-forming agent. The density and thermal conductivity of the porous ZrC ceramics are 3.12 g/cm³ and 1.82 W/(m·K), respectively, which are 53.64 and 91.12% lower than the density and thermal conductivity of dense ZrC ceramics, respectively. The results indicated that ZrC HMs are promising as pore-forming agents or a matrix for lightweight thermal insulation and high-temperature resistance applications in ultra-high temperature environments.