Doped iron oxide scaffolds with gradient porosity fabricated by freeze casting: pore morphology prediction and processing parameters

Abstract

Iron oxide scaffolds with gradient porosity were fabricated using the freeze-casting technique. Doped iron oxide particles were employed to generate stable particle suspensions in camphene using the ball-milling technique. Viscosity measurements were performed to determine the effect of the milling time and the additive incorporation. The freeze-casting process implemented in this work created a wide diversity of solidification front velocities, (2–80 µm s−1), and thermal gradients, (0.2–20°C cm−1) during sample fabrication. The solidification problem of liquid/solid systems has often been reviewed, but usually only under steady-state conditions. This study presents a much simpler approach for the correlation of the average dendrite arm spacing and pore morphology with different processing parameters.