Carbon fibre-reinforced magnesium: Improvement of bending strength by nanodesign of boron nitride interlayers

The influence of differently nanostructured hexagonal boron nitride (BN) interlayers on the bending strength of carbon fibre-reinforced magnesium was investigated. The structure and composition of the layers were characterized down to the atomic scale by combination of high-resolution electron microscopy, electron energy-loss spectroscopy and energy-filtered electron microscopy. The mechanical behaviour of the composites correlates with the BN nanostructure: interlayers with a definite texturing of the BN stacks can distinctly improve the bending strength by 42% to 1620 MPa compared to those with randomly oriented BN planes.