Formation of TiO2 ceramic foams from the integration of the sol-gel method with surfactants assembly and emulsion

A general and potentially easy method for synthesizing TiO2 ceramic foams presenting hierarchical architecture of meso and macropores is presented here. The ceramics foaming method is based on the integration of the sol-gel process with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) surfactant and oil droplets of isopropyl myristate (IPM) as dual pore templates. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of ionic surfactant on the porous structure and specific surface area. The structural feature of these materials was characterized by analyzes of X-ray diffraction, nitrogen absorption/desorption isotherms, Hg porosimetry, He and Dried-Fluid(A (R)) picnometers. Mercury intrusion porosimetry shows that SDS and IPM induce the formation of hierarchical structure composed of two families of pores, namely macro and mesopores. The relative population of each family and the average size of macropores could be finely tuned by adjusting the SDS quantity. In the presence of this surfactant, a single anatase crystalline phase was observed for titania foams fired at 600 A degrees C.