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Oxide ceramics are widely used as thermal protection materials due to their excellent structural properties and earth abundance. However, in extremely high-temperature environments (above 1500 °C), the explosive growth of grain size causes irreversible damage to the microstructure of oxide ceramics, thus exhibiting poor thermomechanical stability. This problem, which may lead to catastrophic accidents, remains a great challenge for oxide ceramic materials. Here, a novel strategy of phase transition modulation is proposed to control the grain growth at high temperatures in oxide ceramic nanofibers, realizing effective regulation of the crystalline forms as well as the size uniformity of primary grains, and thus suppressing the malignant growth of the grains. The resulting oxide ceramic nanofibers have excellent mechanical strength and flexibility, delivering an average tensile strength as high as 1.02 GPa after being exposed to 1700 °C for 30 min, and can withstand thousands of flexural cycles without obvious damage. This work may provide new insight into the development of advanced oxide ceramic materials that can serve in extremely high-temperature environments with long-term durability.
Xu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.