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.
- dwoosley
This is a pretty cool concept for hobbyist with a 3d printer who wants one off metal parts. Sure, you can always cast… but it’s not easy.
There is a similar way to do this casting with infusion and sintering using metal powder infused FTP printer filament. It shrinks down a bit more than this freeze casting sintering I think but it skips the slurry/freezing step of freeze casting.
- usui
> solution or slurry
> suspension or slurry
> solution or slurry
> suspension or slurry
I'm not sure why this has to be specified more than once. Is a "slurry" meaningfully different enough from a "suspension" or "solution" such that it needs to be specified each time?