Abstract
Porous Ca(2)Mg(2)Al(28)O(46) (C(2)M(2)A(14)) ceramics are highly competitive candidates in the field of critical metal filtration due to their attractive non-metallic-inclusions removal capacity. However, the low mechanical strength and inadequate thermal shock resistance (TSR) of these materials restrict their further application. In this work, ZrO(2)-toughened C(2)M(2)A(14)-based porous ceramics are fabricated by using the polymer sponge replica method. Nano-sized ZrO(2) particles derived from nano-ZrO(2) sol are beneficial to enhance the mechanical properties and TSR of porous ceramics. The optimized porous C(2)M(2)A(14) ceramics exhibit robust compressive strength (2.15 MPa), good residual strength ratio (66.4%) and excellent filtration efficiency in the reduction in total oxygen content (68.4%) by adding 3 wt% ZrO(2) sol. These excellent comprehensive properties show that as-prepared porous C(2)M(2)A(14) ceramics are promising candidate materials for application in the field of critical metal filtration.