Porous nanofibrous mullite ceramics with a lamellar structure and excellent compression resilience property

Abstract Porous fibrous mullite ceramics have the characteristics of high‐temperature resistance, lightweight, and thermal insulation, and have been widely used as the high‐temperature thermal insulation materials in various thermal protection systems. In order to further improve the rebound‐resilience property, a porous nanofibrous mullite ceramic with a lamellar structure was successfully fabricated by stacking electrospun mullite fiber membranes layer‐by‐layer. Results indicate that the introduction of zirconia into mullite fibers was able to inhibit the rapid growth of mullite grains. The porous nanofibrous mullite ceramics exhibited a lamellar structure, in which a large amount of space existed between adjacent fiber membrane layers, which provided enough space for the deformation of the mullite fibers. Therefore, the samples exhibited excellent compression resilience properties. Results show that the sample sintered at 1400°C still exhibited a high porosity (95.6%), low thermal conductivity (0.0399 W·m −1 ·K −1 ) and high compression resilience ratio (96.4%). This work provides an effective strategy for the fabrication of thermally insulating elastic porous fibrous ceramics, which can be widely used in the thermal protection systems of various aircraft and the thermal insulation layers of diverse industrial furnaces.