Tailored Powder Composites by Freeze Drying, Electrophoretic Deposition and Sintering

Two approaches for the fabrication of tailored powder composites with specially distributed pore-grain structure and chemical composition are investigated. Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) followed by microwave sintering is employed to obtain functionally graded materials (FGM) by in-situ controlling the deposition bath suspension composition. $Al_2O_3/ZrO_2$ and zeolite FGM are successfully synthesized using this technique. In order to fabricate an aligned porous structure, unidirectional freezing followed by freeze drying and sintering is employed. By controlling the temperature gradient during freezing of powder slurry, a unidirectional ice-ceramic structure is obtained. The frozen specimen is then subjected to freeze drying to sublimate the ice. The obtained capillary-porous ceramic specimen is consolidated by sintering. The sintering of the graded structure is modeled by the continuum theory of sintering.