The technique of depositing zirconia coatings onto woven fibre mats has bee
n investigated in detail. The application of a coating to the fibre is esse
ntially one of the easiest methods of providing a fibre-matrix interface wi
th desired properties. Such coatings can act as reaction barriers or as fib
re-matrix debond interfaces. This particular coating method, which is the d
ip-coating of fibre tows in zirconia sols? does not require sophisticated a
pparatus and, therefore, has great potential as a standard coating techniqu
e for use with woven fibre systems. In this work, an "in-house" produced zi
rconia sol, synthesised using hydrothermal processing, has been found to be
the most successful coating material. Both alumina and alumina-silica wove
n fibre mats were used as the substrate materials. It has been shown that t
he zirconia sol employed can be deposited successfully in a single coating
step, as a thin (1-2 mu m) coating with minimal bridging of the fibre mats.
The critical coating parameters when using this dip-coating technique have
been discussed in detail. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserv
ed.