Ultra‐High‐Temperature Ceramic Coatings for Oxidation Protection of Carbon–Carbon Composites

Carbon-carbon (C-C) composites are attractive materials for hypersonic flight vehicles but they oxidize in air at temperatures >500°C and need thermal protection systems to survive aerothermal heating. We investigated using multilayers of high-temperature ceramics such as ZrB 2 and SiC to protect C-C against oxidation. Our approach combines pretreatment and processing steps to create continuous and adherent high-temperature ceramic coatings from infiltrated preceramic polymers. We tested our protective coatings at temperatures above 2600°C at the National Solar Thermal Testing Facility using controlled cold-wall heat flux profiles reaching a maximum of 680 W/cm 2 .

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