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Aligned Porous Structures by Directional Freezing
Author(s) -
Zhang H.,
Cooper A. I.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.200700154
Subject(s) - materials science , microfabrication , photolithography , porosity , nanotechnology , microfluidics , lithography , soft lithography , pdms stamp , porous medium , fabrication , composite material , optoelectronics , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
Materials with aligned porous structures have broad potential in applications such as organic electronics, microfluidics, and tissue engineering. Materials of this type can be fabricated using techniques such as microfabrication, soft lithography, and photolithography. Directional freezing is a cheap, simple, and novel route to prepare aligned porous materials in the form of 2D surface patterns or 3D monolithic structures. A solvent—typically water but also organic solvents or carbon dioxide—is frozen unidirectionally and the pore structure is templated from the aligned solvent crystals that are formed. These methods can produce complex composite materials with a range of aligned pore architectures.