Strategies for the Fabrication of Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Ultra-High Temperature Ceramic Matrix Composites: Toward the Solid-Liquid Combination Route

Abstract

As the speeds of high-speed vehicles continue to increase, hot-end components such as nose cones, leading edges, and combustor liners are subjected to ultra-high temperatures exceeding 2000 °C and strongly oxidizing environments, imposing stringent requirements on thermal-protection materials. Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) exhibit excellent oxidation and ablation resistance; however, their inherent brittleness has long hindered practical applications. Integrating three-dimensional continuous carbon fibers with UHTCs represents one of the most promising strategies to address this bottleneck. Currently, the preparation of continuous carbon fiber-reinforced ultra-high temperature ceramic matrix composites (UHTCMCs) primarily involves four basic approaches: chemical vapor infiltration, precursor infiltration and pyrolysis, reactive melt infiltration, and slurry infiltration, as well as the recently developed solid-liquid combination fabrication strategy (SL), which is a hybrid process that combines the introduction of slurry-based powders with precursor-based densification. These routes commonly face challenges in uniformly incorporating a high-volume fraction of UHTC matrix phase, achieving satisfactory densification, and avoiding thermochemical damage to carbon fibers. Among them, the SL route, which synergistically combines the high ceramic-loading capability of slurry-based processing with the low-temperature densification of precursor-based routes, stands out as a particularly promising pathway, offering a processing window inaccessible to any single route and holding considerable promise for the fabrication of dense, high-UHTC-content composites. This perspective systematically reviews recent advances in the fabrication of continuous carbon-fiber-reinforced UHTCMCs. The technical pathways and intrinsic limitations of each strategy are critically analyzed, with particular attention to the emerging SL route, and future research directions toward its maturation and engineering translation are proposed.

Keywords

Ultra-high temperature ceramic matrix composites / Chemical vapor infiltration / Precursor infiltration and pyrolysis / Reactive melt infiltration / Slurry infiltration / Solid-liquid combination fabrication strategy / Toughening

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The Author(s) 2026. This article is published by Higher Education Press.

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