Commercially available cordierite and mullite powders were used to obtain cordierite and cordierite-30wt% mullite materials by attrition milling, uniaxial pressing and sintering. Cordierite powders were the coarse (D50 = 1.82 mum), medium (D50 = 0.9 mum) and fine (D50 = 0.45 mum) single granulometric fractions and binary mixtures of them. Mullite powder employed in composites was the 7 h-attrition milled one (D50 = 1.3 mum). Hardness (H V) and fracture toughness (K IC) were measured by Vickers indentation techniques. Composites showed higher H V and K IC than cordierite matrices. In both materials, H V and K IC diminish with the increasing porosity. Dielectric constant (epsilon) and losses (tan delta) were determined at 1 MHz. An increase in epsilon and tan delta values was registered when mullite was present in composites with respect to cordierite material. Higher the porosity, epsilon was lower and tan delta increased. The thermal expansion coefficients (alpha) were determined up to 1000 °C resulting the alpha of the composite close to that of the silicon.
