A novel route to produce porous ceramics

The possibility to consolidate alumina powder stabilized Pickering emulsions of paraffin oil in ethanol by means of electrophoretic deposition (EPD) into freestanding porous objects is reported. The pore forming paraffin is extracted from the consolidated powder compact by means of evaporation prior to sintering. The sintered ceramics contain spherical pores with a diameter that can be tuned from 200 μm to 20 μm. Both open and closed porosities can be obtained by altering the emulsion composition. Since no pore forming fugitive solid organic binder is used, the delicate and time-consuming debinding step during processing is eliminated.