Enhanced Thermal Shock Resistance of Porous Ca₂Mg₂Al₂₈O₄₆ Ceramic Filter via Nano-Sized ZrO₂ Toughening

Porous Ca₂Mg₂Al₂₈O₄₆ (C₂M₂A₁₄) ceramics are highly competitive candidates in the field of critical metal filtration due to their attractive non-metallic-inclusions removal capacity. However, the low mechanical strength and inadequate thermal shock resistance (TSR) of these materials restrict their further application. In this work, ZrO₂-toughened C₂M₂A₁₄-based porous ceramics are fabricated by using the polymer sponge replica method. Nano-sized ZrO₂ particles derived from nano-ZrO₂ sol are beneficial to enhance the mechanical properties and TSR of porous ceramics. The optimized porous C₂M₂A₁₄ ceramics exhibit robust compressive strength (2.15 MPa), good residual strength ratio (66.4%) and excellent filtration efficiency in the reduction in total oxygen content (68.4%) by adding 3 wt% ZrO₂ sol. These excellent comprehensive properties show that as-prepared porous C₂M₂A₁₄ ceramics are promising candidate materials for application in the field of critical metal filtration.