1. College of Earth Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China;
2. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130025, China;
3. The First Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources of Shandong Province, Ji'nan 250014, China

Silver mine tailings are generated during the exploitation and extraction of silver. Immense amounts of silver mine tailings accumulated in the tailing ponds or backfilled in the mine have resulted in serious dust pollution and heavy metal pollution etc. In this study, ceramics were prepared by using the measure of one step sintering with the mixtures of silver mine tailings, talc and wollastonite, and the impact of silver mine tailings and wollastonite contents on the structure and properties of ceramics were investigated. Moreover, the phase, structure and morphology of ceramics were characterized by methods of XRD, FTIR and SEM. In addition, the apparent porosity, water absorption, volume density, flexural strength and coefficient of thermal expansion of ceramics were tested. The experimental results showed that the optimum performances of ceramics occurred when sintered at 1 200℃ and with raw material consisting of 50wt% of silver mine tailings, 20wt% of wollastonite and 30wt% of talc. The ceramics exhibited excellent properties, with flexural strength of 77.78±8.78 MPa, apparent porosity of (0.4±0.06)%, water absorption of (0.21±0.05)% and a bulk density of 1.93±0.02 g/cm³. A simple, efficient and economical preparation method of ceramics is presented in this article, which is an effective approach to value-added utilization of silver mine tailings.