Synthesis of nanostructured silicon carbide at ultralow temperature using self-assembled polymer micelles as a precursor

Abstract

Nanostructured SiC ceramics exhibit unusual and superior properties compared to their microstructured counterparts, thus hold promise for widespread applications. We report a novel technique for synthesizing dense nanostructured SiC at an ultralow-temperature without pressure. In this technique, polyvinylsilazane-block-polystyrene (PVSZ-b-PS) block copolymers were synthesized and then self-assembled into nano-scaled micelles with the precursor PVSZ as the core and the sacrificial PS as the shell. The subsequent pyrolysis converted the aggregation of the micelles into dense nanostructured SiC with a grain size of ∼20–30 nm at 800 °C.