Abstract
Due to its excellent thermal resistance, mechanical and chemical stability both at room and elevated temperature, silicon carbide (SiC) is an attractive material for nuclear fuel cladding or catalyst substrates. Pore size control and high porosity are the key factors for such applications. Two approaches are studied during this PhD thesis:(1) The Soft Templating Approach. The porosity and the structure of the final materials are defined by the supramolecular self-assembly of a structure directing agent (SDA) into a molecular SiC precursor. Low molecular-mass organic gelators and a commercial tri-block copolymer are considered as SDA for the synthesis of mesoporous SiC materials.(2) The Hard Templating Approach. SiC materials are synthesized by preceramic polymer nanocasting into mesoporous silica. This process preserves the nanoscale structure of the solid template and leads to mesostructured SiC materials with a high specific surface area.The hard templating approach allows a good replication of the solid template but the difficulty of this method lies in the elimination step of this template. Meanwhile, soft templating approach does not have this drawback and may lead to porous ceramics with more varied structures depending on the SDA used. The complexity of this approach is the template replication step.