Design of crack deflection induced high toughness laminated Si₃N₄ ceramics based on hollow oriented one-dimensional microstructure

A laminated silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) ceramic material with a hollow, oriented, one-dimensional microstructure was successfully prepared based on the tape casting and sacrificial template method. The results show that hollow, oriented, one-dimensional microstructures can effectively induce crack deflection. Different arrangements of the structural design layer and dense layer will have different effects on the material. In particular, bulks with a single-layer orthogonal arrangement of the structural design layer possess high toughness and obvious crack deflection during the fracture process. A kind of multiscale crack deflection mode was realized. Compared with the fracture toughness of the monolithic Si₃N₄ ceramic bulk (5.55 MPa m^1/2), the fracture toughness can reach 8.73 MPa m^1/2, and the flexural strength can still reach 391.47 MPa with only a slight decrease.