The search for ways of fabricating tough, reliable ceramic components for engineering applications, and particularly for high temperature aerospace applications, has stimulated a great deal of work on polymeric precursors for silicon carbide and silicon nitride ceramics. This work is aimed at overcoming the two major limitations of ceramics which restrict commercial applications; brittleness, and difficulty of fabrication without the introduction of flaws. Most of the work to date has been on the production of ceramic fibres for reinforcement, although there is also interest in producing polymeric precursors for moulded ceramic products.

This review describes the synthesis of polymeric precursors for silicon carbide, silicon carbonitride and silicon nitride ceramics, and looks at the properties of the resulting fibres. Alumina, boron nitride and boron carbide precursors are also considered.

The report is completed by some 202 abstracts selected from the Polymer Library.