Abstract
Porous Al2TiO5 ceramics with various starches as pore-forming agents have been prepared by the reactive sintering method using fine-grained starting materials. Commercially available corn, potato and rice starches were used as the pore forming agents. TG–DTA and XRD studies revealed that the rice starch most promoted the formation of Al2TiO5 among the three starches, presumably due to its strong heat flow during the combustion. Al2TiO5 samples sintered with each starch contained a bimodal pore-size distribution, viz., slit-like pores with the size of <~20 µm, and continuous open-pores with the size of several µm. The thermal expansion behavior of the sample with 30 wt.% rice starch was similar to those without starch.
