Ice Templating and Freeze-Drying for Porous Materials and Their Applications

9Nanostructured Materials Fabricated via Ice Templating of Colloidal/Nanoparticle Suspensions

9.1 Introduction

Colloids and nanoparticles are used widely in the fabrication of porous materials by ice templating [1–3]. These particles may be used either as the main component [4, 5] or combined with polymers to form composites, e.g. silica/polymer [6, 7]. Indeed, many examples have been described in Chapter 5 for porous ceramics and in Chapter 6 for ceramic/polymer composites. An important feature in these studies is that the solid contents or concentrations in the suspensions are usually quite high (usually >5 wt%, more often 10–30 vol%). These particles are usually commercially available and the fine control of the size/morphology of these particles ...