Fabrication and characterization of polymer-derived high-entropy carbide ceramic powders

Polymer-derived ceramic (PDC) route has been widely used to fabricate various ceramics or ceramic-matrix composites in recent years. However, the synthesis of high-entropy ceramics via PDC route has rarely been reported until now. Herein, we successfully synthesized a class of high-entropy carbides, namely (Hf0.25Nb0.25Zr0.25Ti0.25)C (HEC-1), via PDC route. The polymer-derived HEC-1 ceramics consisted of numerous superfine particles with the average particle size ~800 nm. Meanwhile, they possessed a rock-salt structure of metal carbides and high-compositional uniformity from nanoscale to microscale. In addition, the as-obtained HEC-1 ceramics had a low oxygen impurity content of 0.51% and a low free carbon impurity content of 2.56%. This work will open up a new research field on the fabrication of high-entropy ceramics or high-entropy ceramic-matrix composites via PDC route.