A unique porous material with controlled pore characteristics can be fabricated by the freeze-drying process, which uses the slurry of organic material as the sublimable vehicle mixed with powders. The essential feature in this process is that during the solidification of the slurry, the dendrites of the organic material should repel the dispersed particles into the interdendritic region. In the present work, a model experiment is attempted using some transparent organic materials mixed with glass powders, which enable in-situ observation. The organic materials used are camphor-naphthalene mixture (hypo- and hypereutectic composition), salol, camphene, and pivalic acid. Among these materials, the constituent phases in camphor-naphthalene system, i.e. naphthalene plate, camphor dendrite, and camphornaphthalene eutectic exclusively repel the glass powders. This result suggests that the control of organic material composition in the binary system is useful for producing a porous body with the required pore structure.

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• Freeze Drying Process and Pore Structure Characteristics of Porous Cu with Various Sublimable Vehicles
  Gyuhwi Lee, Sung-Tag Oh, Myung-Jin Suk, Young-Keun Jeong
  Journal of Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute.2020; 27(3): 198.     CrossRef

Porous thick film of alumina which is fabricated by freeze tape casting using a camphene-camphor-acrylate vehicle. Alumina slurry is mixed above the melting point of the camphene-camphor solvent. Upon cooling, the camphene-camphor crystallizes from the solution as particle-free dendrites, with the Al₂O₃ powder and acrylate liquid in the interdendritic spaces. Subsequently, the acrylate liquid is solidified by photopolymerization to offer mechanical properties for handling. The microstructure of the porous alumina film is characterized for systems with different cooling rate around the melting temperature of camphor-camphene. The structure of the dendritic porosity is compared as a function of ratio of camphene-camphor solvent and acrylate content, and Al₂O₃ powder volume fraction in acrylate in terms of the dendrite arm width.