Porous ceramics based on refractory double oxides are promising for light-weight structural components and high-temperature filter materials. In this study, porous MgTi 2 O 5 ceramics with pseudobrookite-type structure have been prepared by in situ processing (viz. reactive sintering). High-temperature XRD revealed the in situ reaction behavior of the mixed powder, and indicated suitable sintering temperatures to obtain single phase MgTi 2 O 5 (²1000°C). Uniformly porous MgTi 2 O 5 ceramics with very narrow pore-size distribution at the diameter of ³1 µm were obtained by the pyrolytic reactive sintering at 10001200°C, where decomposed CO 2 gas from a carbonate source acted as an intrinsic pore forming agent. Thermal expansion behavior of bulk porous MgTi 2 O 5 (porosity: 42%) is also discussed.©2010 The Ceramic Society of Japan. All rights reserved.Key-words : MgTi 2 O 5 , Pseudobrookite, Karrooite, Pore-size distribution, In-situ process, High-temperature XRD, Thermal expansion [Received May 31, 2010; Accepted September 16, 2010] Multiple oxide ceramics with orthorhombic pseudobrookitetype structure (expressed as Me 3 O 5 ) generally have low average (bulk) thermal expansion coefficients among oxides. 1)3) In the pseudobrookite structure, one axis (a-axis in Cmcm notation, or c-axis in Bbmm) has negative or very-small thermal expansion. Such a strong expansion anisotropy induces the formation of microcracks, resulting in the low bulk thermal expansion.
1)Among pseudobrookite oxides, aluminum titanate (Al 2 TiO 5 , AT), has been most eagerly studied as a thermal-shock resistant material.1)11) However, undoped-Al 2 TiO 5 tends to decompose into Al 2 O 3 and TiO 2 at elevated temperatures; 12),13) due to the large distortion of MeO 6 -octahedra, Al 2 TiO 5 phase is metastable below 1200°C. Furthermore, microcracks induced by the strong thermal-expansion anisotropy gradually degrades mechanical properties.MgTi 2 O 5 (karrooite, MT 2 ) also has orthorhombic pseudobrookite-type crystal structure and shows relatively low thermal expansion ( Table 1 31) In this paper, high-temperature X-ray diffractometry for the in situ reaction, effect of sintering temperature on microstructure, and thermal expansion behavior of porous MgTi 2 O 5 are described.Similarly to previously reported UPC-3D (uniformly porous ceramic/composite with three dimension network structure), 33)37) carbonate is used as a starting material; decomposed CO 2 gas, emitted during the one-step pyrolytic reacting sintering, forms very uniform open porous structure. Commercially available MgCO 3 (basic) powder (approx. 3MgCO 3 Mg(OH) 2