The rapid development of engineering filtering process suggests that it is imperative to produce membrane substrates with a fine pore size, high gas permeation, and antifouling properties for efficient and long-term application. This study reports on a novel fabrication method of a porous Al2O3/CaAl12O19 ceramic membrane substrate by a direct foaming method combined with cement solidification and tape-casting technology. The microstructure of the produced ceramic membrane consisted of pores with a size of 50-150m, which were interconnected with each other with a large number of small filtering functional pores of <10m. By increasing the amount of the foaming agent, the porosity of the porous Al2O3/CaAl12O19 ceramic membranes was tailored from 64.8% to 80.5%, and the bending strength decreased from 32.1 +/- 1.0 to 9.6 +/- 0.9MPa, respectively. The sintered hydrophilic ceramic substrate was successfully modified to a hydrophobic one (with water contact angles of 143 degrees) by pyrolysis of dimethyldichlorosilane and dichloromethylsilane. The resultant membrane displayed high chemical stability and self-cleaning features. The membrane with a porosity of 64.8% had a N-2 permeation of 3.0 (+/- 0.5) x 10(7) Lm(-2)h(-1) at 0.5bar and a water flux which could be totally suppressed at a liquid entry pressure of 0.45bar.