High-fracture-toughness ternary layered ceramics: from the MAX to MAB phases

Abstract

The MAX phase of the ternary layered compound and the recently attracted attention of the MAB phase have become the research hotspots in the field of structural ceramics for more than 20 years because of their common characteristics of ceramics and metals. The high damage tolerance and high fracture toughness are different from the essential characteristics of traditional ceramics. The overall development of MAX phase and the latest research progress of MAB phase were briefly reviewed in this article, focusing on the analysis of the effect of multi-scale layered structure on macro-mechanical behavior and its internal mechanism. Based on the results of first-principles calculations,the bond stiffness model was established and the quantitative characterization of chemical bond strength was realized, and more importantly, it was clarified that "sufficiently" weak interlayer bonding is the root cause for the extraordinary mechanical properties of ternary layered ceramics. The magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of Fe2AlB2 near room temperature shows the good application prospects of MAB phase compounds in the functional field. After more than 20 years of continuous research, the structure and performance of MAX-phase compounds have gradually become clear. At present, application research for specific scenarios is vigorously carried out all over the world. However, the current knowledge of MAB phase compounds is still very limited. Therefore, synthesizing and characterizing the structure, mechanical properties, physical properties, and service behaviour of existing MAB phase compounds are the important tasks at this stage. First-principles numerical simulation based on density functional theory (DFT) can play an important role, just as in understanding the extraordinary properties of MAX phase compounds and discovering new compounds.

Keywords

• max phase
• mab phase
• layered structure
• damage tolerance
• model of bond stiffness
• magnetic refrigeration
• fe₂alb₂