Preparation of novel reticulated prickly porous ceramics with mullite whiskers.

• A novel reticulated prickly porous ceramics with mullite whiskers. • The mullite whiskers on the inside and outside surfaces of skeleton. • The number and length of mullite whiskers is highly controllable. • The potential of porous ceramics as catalyst supports was demonstrated. • A kind of raw materials of this work is waste. Porous materials are widely used in heat exchangers, sewage treatment, electromagnetic shielding, thermal insulation, gas adsorption, photocatalytic due to their high specific surface area. The specific surface area of materials plays a pivotal role in them. It can be enhanced by increasing the porosity of the material, but the cost of this improvement is reducing the strength of the material. In order to improve performance, it is necessary to increase its surface area without reducing the strength of the material. In this work, mullite porous ceramics with mullite whisker on the inside and outside surfaces structures, which known as prickly porous ceramics(PPCs). They were fabricated using polyurethane foam coated with slurries as the pore-forming agents, sintered after secondary impregnation with silica sol and ammonium fluoroaluminate. The the sintering temperature as well as slurry composition of secondary impregnation were tuned to tailor the strength and surface structures of the PPCs. In addition, the potential of PPCs as high-temperature catalyst supports was demonstrated. Overall, the PPCs demonstrated large surface areas and high mechanical strength. This study paved the way for the fabrication of high-performance porous ceramics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]