Closed porosity ceramics and glasses

Abstract

In the last three decades, considerable effort has been devoted to obtain both open and closed porosity ceramics & glasses in order to benefit from unique combination of properties such as mechanical strength, thermal and chemical stability at low-relative density. Most of these investigations were directed to the production and the analysis of the properties for open porosity materials, and regrettably quite a few compositions and manufacturing methods were documented for closed porosity ceramics & glasses in the scientific literature so far. This review focuses on the processing strategies, the properties and the applications of closed porosity ceramics & glasses with total porosity higher than 25%. The ones below such level are intentionally left out and the paper is set out to demonstrate the porous components with deliberately generated closed pores/cells. The processing strategies are categorized into five different groups, namely sacrificial templating, high-temperature bonding of hollow structures, casting, direct foaming, and emulsions. The principles underlying these methods are given, with particular emphasis on the critical issues that affect the pore characteristics, mechanical, thermal and electrical properties of the produced components.