A self-setting particle-stabilized porous ceramic panel prepared from commercial cement and loaded with carbon for potential radar-absorbing applications

Abstract

Porous ceramic materials are in a current research focus because of their outstanding thermal stability, chemical stability and lightweight. Recent research has widened the range of applications to radar absorption to utilize the advantages of porous ceramic materials. There has been long-standing interest in the development of lightweight radar-absorbing materials for military applications such as camouflaging ground-based facilities against airborne radar detection. Therefore, in this study, a novel lightweight radar-absorbing material for X-band frequencies was developed using a self-setting particle-stabilized porous ceramic panel composited with carbon. The panel was prepared using a commercial calcium aluminate cement (as a self-setting matrix), zeolite 13X particles with propyl gallate (as a particle-stabilized pore former) and carbon (as a radar-absorbing material). The panel contained macropores approximately 200 to 400 μm in size formed by zeolite 13X particles that are irreversibly adsorbed at liquid-gas interfaces. The self-setting particle-stabilized porous ceramic panels were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, mercury porosimetry, physisorption analysis, capillary flow porosimetry and network analysis. When 0.2 wt.% carbon was added to a selfsetting particle-stabilized porous ceramic panel to fabricate a composite 7mm thick, the maximum reflection loss was -11.16 dB at 12.4GHz. The effects of the amount of added carbon and the thickness variation of a self-setting particle-stabilized porous ceramic panel on the radar-absorbing properties remain important issues for further research.