Freeze-Casting: How Ice Templates Create Advanced Porous Materials
I explore freeze-casting, a technique using directional freezing to create porous ceramics, polymers, and metals. By controlling ice crystal growth, we template hierarchical structures with aligned macropores. This method, evolving from early turbocharger blade experiments, now enables innovations in tissue scaffolds, photonics, and dentistry through precise manipulation of particle rejection and solidification speeds.
The first reported instance of freeze-casting, in the modern sense, was in 1954 when Maxwell et al. attempted to fabricate turbosupercharger blades out of refractory powders.