Processing of microcellular preceramics using carbon dioxide

An innovative processing route for developing microcellular ceramics has been developed. This newly designed technology relies on the implementation of the principle of inducing a thermodynamic instability in the production process for microcellular preceramic polymers that are further transformed into microcellular ceramics using pyrolysis. In this work, we have particularly focused on studying the feasibility of fabricating microcellular ceramics and the processing parameter-cell density relationships in the processing of microcellular preceramic polymers. The presented results indicate that the proposed novel processing method is suitable for the manufacture of porous ceramics with high uniformity of the cell size, shape, and volume. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.