Synthesis of porous oxide ceramics using a soft responsive scaffold

Ceramic materials have significant utility. Developing synthetic protocols that are facile and provide low energy alternatives to traditional methods remains a major driver in materials synthesis. We present here the adaptation of a method recently developed in our group for the synthesis of porous silica using a non-ionic emulsion template. The silicate materials are porous on both the nanometre and micrometre length scales and surface-to-volume ratios may be readily modified by altering the volume fraction of the emulsion template. Switching the silica precursor for an alumina or titania precursor resulted in the formation of porous alumina and titania materials which were prepared as thin films or monoliths. The pores formed in the amorphous alumina materials were ~0.8 μm and ~50 nm, with a primary particle size of 50–100 nm. The titania materials had pores on one length scale only: ~0.8 μm, with a smaller primary particle size of 20–60 nm. As-synthesized materials were investigated using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction.