SiOC Ceramic Monoliths with Hierarchical Porosity Cekdar Vakifahmetoglu Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica-Settore Materiali, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy Paolo Colombo* ,w Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica-Settore Materiali, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 Alberto Pauletti, Cristina Fernandez, Martin, and Florence Babonneau Laboratoire de Chimie de la Matie`re Condense´e de Paris, CNRS, UMR 7574, UPMC Univ Paris 06, F-75005 Paris, France SiOC glass monoliths possessing hierarchical porosity were produced by a one-pot processing method. Periodic meso- porous organosilica (PMO) particles were embedded into a foamed siloxane preceramic polymer. After pyrolysis at 10001C in inert atmosphere, open celled, permeable SiOC ceramic monoliths with a high amount of pores, ranging in size from hundred of micrometers to a few nanometers, were obtained. The components possessed a specific surface area of 137 m 2 /g, indicating the retention of most of the mesopores after the pyrolytic conversion of the PMO precursor particles. These fillers converted to truncated rhombic dodecahedral SiOC mesoporous micron-sized grains, homogeneously distributed throughout the SiOC cellular matrix. The produced porous ceramics possessed compression strength of about 1.7 MPa, which is adequate for their use in several engineering applications. Int. J. Appl. Ceram. Technol., 7 [4] 528–535 (2010) DOI:10.1111/j.1744-7402.2009.02365.x Ceramic Product Development and Commercialization *Member, The American Ceramic Society. w paolo.colombo@unipd.it r 2009 The American Ceramic Society