Fabrication of Porous TiO₂ Ceramics Using Corn Starch and Graphite as Pore Forming Agents

Two sources of pore former have been used; namely, starch and graphite to control porosity, pore sizes and pore shapes. The three batches were fabricated using 10 mass-% graphite, 5 mass-% graphite plus 5 mass-% starch and 10 mass-% starch, respectively. The dried green batches were subjected to fire at different temperatures, e.g. 1100, 1200 and 1300 °C for 1 h. The results revealed that the specimens containing 5 and 10 mass-% starch attained porous structure at different firing temperatures with micro pore sizes. The batch prepared using starch exhibited very high and sharply increased strength in comparison with those containing graphite and graphite plus starch. This is due to the formation of homogeneous foaming structure with smaller pore size and larger number of pores. Moreover, the strength of the batches fired at 1100 and 1200 °C was lower than that fired at 1300 °C .