Articles
  • Processing of porous silicon oxycarbide ceramics from extruded blends of polysiloxane and low-density polyethylene
  • Chunmin Wanga, Jin Wanga, Chul B. Parka and Young-Wook Kimb,*
  • a Microcellular Plastics Manufacturing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G8 b Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Seoul, Seoul 130-743, Korea
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a new technology to fabricate controlled and uniformly distributed porous ceramic structures from the blends of polyolefin and preceramic polymers by compounding and subsequent pyrolysis. As examples, porous silicon oxycarbide ceramics with either fully open-celled or major close-celled structures, with cell porosities ranging from 20.5% to 79.8%, cell densities higher than 108 cells/cm3 and cell diameters smaller than 50 μm, were made from lowdensity polyethylene (LDPE) and polysiloxane blends. The LDPE powders and polysiloxane were directly compounded using a counter-rotated twin-screw extruder with a filamentary die, and then the specimens obtained were transformed into porous silicon oxycarbide ceramics by controlled pyrolysis.

Keywords: Porous ceramics, Silicon oxycarbide, Polysiloxane, Extrusion.

This Article

  • 2009; 10(2): 238-242

    Published on Apr 30, 2009