Currently, ceramic processing technologies in our laboratories include extrusion, tape casting, slip casting and 2 roll milling.

The laboratories are also equipped with all necessary milling facilities (ball miller, planetary miller, Z bra mixer, ultra-sound bath, sonotrode…), drying chambers under humid atmosphere and high temperature furnaces for sintering under controlled atmospheres.

 

Extrusion

In this process, ceramic powders and additives are mixed together to form a paste of suitable rheology. The paste is then introduced in a pilot-scale ram extruder and shaped through exiting a die.  Several dies are available enabling to produce tubes with controlled wall thickness and outer diameter, rods and multi-channels.

 

Examples:
Tubes of oxygen transport membranes after drying.

Contact: Marie-Laure Fontaine

 

Tape casting

A slurry (i.e. a mixture of ceramic powder with polymers and dispersants in water or in an organic solvent) is cast evenly on a flat surface by means of a "doctor blade". After drying, the thin, flexible "green tape" is removed, cut to the desired shape and fired. The green tape may also be laminated or shaped into more complex structures before firing.

 

Contact: Christelle Denonville

 

Slip casting

A ceramic dispersion is filled into a plastic mould which has a filter or a porous membrane on the bottom. The dispersion medium is sucked through the filter using a vacuum pump, leaving the ceramic particles as a "filter cake" on the filter. This green disc is removed from the filter, dried and fired.

 

Slip casting is used to make	Example
Precision discs	Porous Al2O3 membrane supports

 

Contact: Sen Mei