Ceramic foams and micro-beads from emulsions of a preceramic polymer.pdfVIP

Available online at Journal of the European Ceramic Society 31 2011 1481–1490 Ceramic foams and micro-beads from emulsions of a preceramic polymer Cekdar Vakifahmetoglu 1, Marco Balliana, Paolo Colombo ? Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Settore Materiali, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy Received 26 November 2010; received in revised form 27 January 2011; accepted 6 February 2011 Available online 26 February 2011 Abstract A commercially available solid silicone resin was dissolved in a solvent and emulsi?ed via stirring in the presence of water and surfactant to form three different types of emulsions, namely water-in-oil w/o , water-in-oil-in-water w/o/w and oil-in-water o/w , by following different preparation procedures. After curing, thermosets possessing different morphologies, ranging from highly porous monolithic foams to porous micro-beads and solid micro-beads, formed. The samples kept their shape upon pyrolysis, and resulted in ceramic foams via w/o and porous micron sized ～200 m spherical particles via w/o/w having more than 80 vol% of total porosity, while with o/w emulsi?cation solid SiOC ceramic particles with an average diameter of ～100 m formed. Both surfactant and water altered the IR spectra for emulsion-derived thermoset samples, in comparison to the pure cured resin, but upon pyrolysis similar amorphous ceramics were obtained from all samples. ? 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Preceramic polymers; Porous ceramics; Emulsion; Microbeads 1. Introduction components has so far received relatively little attention.9–13 Recently, this approach was applied to the fabrication of Preceramic polymers have been under intensive research, SiOC ceramics with different shapes, e.g. porous components due to their attractive properties such as commercial avail- max porosity 52% and 40% by using polycarbosilane and ability, easy handling, versatile shaping c