Porous ceramics materials, usually, associate low thermal conductivity, high superficial area, high permeability and high resistance to chemical corrosion. These are interesting features for refractory applications such as filters for high temperatures or thermal insulating purposes. Several techniques have been reported to obtain porous ceramics: organic particle burn-out, replica technique and gelcasting of ceramic foams. However, these processing routes generally result heterogeneous materials with a broad of pore size distribution. Therefore, in this work a novel technique is used in order to produce porous ceramics, where a stable foam, prepared independently, is mixed to a Al2O3 suspension, producing materials with high porosity and homogeneous microstructure (narrow pores distribuition). Besides that, their mechanical strength and Weibull's modulus are presented and the results showed promissing perspectives for this developed technique.
porous ceramics; processing; properties; alumina
