Negative permittivity behavior in carbon fibre/silicon nitride ceramic composites prepared by spark plasma sintering

Abstract Carbon/ceramic composites with adjustable electrical properties can be promising candidates for electromagnetic metamaterials with negative permittivity. Herein, silicon nitride (Si3N4) ceramic composites incorporated with carbon fibres (CFs) were prepared via spark plasma sintering. The fibres were randomly distributed in the ceramic matrixes, and their amounts had a great influence on the microstructure, electrical conductivity, dielectric behaviour, and impedance response of the CF/Si3N4 composites. As the CF content was low, the ceramics with isolated CFs showed a dielectric type of conductivity, along with a capacitive character and positive permittivity. When the CFs were more sufficient to contact or overlap each other in the ceramics, the formation of CF networks endowed the ceramics with a metallic type of conductivity and inductive character. A plasma-type negative permittivity behaviour was observed in these ceramics and was imputed to the low-frequency plasmonic state of free electrons in the formed CF networks. The Drude model was applied to make a precise description of the negative permittivity behaviour. As the CF content increased, the plasma frequency (negative-positive transformation frequency of permittivity) of the ceramics shifted to a higher frequency, and their absolute magnitudes of negative permittivity also increased. Furthermore, equivalent circuit models were utilized to interpret the impedance response of the ceramics, which demonstrated that the negative permittivity was linked to the inductive character. This work provides support for developing ceramic-based metamaterials with tunable negative permittivity that is desirable for many applications.