Enhanced Thermal Shock Resistance of Porous Ca2Mg2Al28O46 Ceramic Filter via Nano-Sized ZrO2 Toughening

Porous Ca2Mg2Al28O46 (C2M2A14) 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, ZrO2 toughened C2M2A14-based porous ceramics are fabricated by using the polymer sponge replica method. Nano-sized ZrO2 particles derived from nano-ZrO2 sol are beneficial to enhance the mechanical properties and TSR of porous ceramics. The optimized porous C2M2A14 ceramics exhibit robust compressive strength (2.15 MPa), good residual strength ratio (66.4%) and excellent filtration efficiency in the reduction of total oxygen content (68.4%) by adding 3 wt% ZrO2 sol. These excellent comprehensive properties of as-prepared porous C2M2A14 ceramics make it a potential alternative material for critical metal filtration.