Highly porous mullite ceramics were fabricated by a reaction-bonding technique from a powder mixture of Al2O3 and SiC, with graphite particles as the pore-forming agent. The effects of sintering temperature on porosity and strength as well as pore size and surface area were investigated. It has been shown that the strength and pore size increase but the porosity and surface area decrease with the increase in sintering temperature. Due to the formation of a fine-grained microstructure with well-developed necks, an average strength up to 106 WPa was achieved at a porosity of 32.4%. On the other hand, a relatively high surface area of 12.4 m(2) g(-1) was obtained for a 61% porous mullite ceramic, which was observed to have a good thermal-shock resistance to crack propagation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.