Porous ceramic from particle-stabilised foams via gelcasting

In this paper, a new method to prepare particle-stabilised foams by using short chain amphiphile valeric acid was reported. Quantitative analysis of the optical microscope pictures taken at different time of particle-stabilised foams indicated that they were ultrastable and almost did not ripen and coalesce. Porous ceramic (porosity > 0.85) from particle-stabilised foams was fabricated by the gelcasting technique. With the ultrastable property, longer idle time can be reached. The morphology of this kind of porous ceramic was also investigated and compared to the conventional porous ceramic fabricated by using long chain surfactant Triton X-114 to foam the suspensions.