Fabrication of Porous Ceramic Materials for Biomedical and Environmental Applications

Ceramics have some properties that are unmatched by other kind of materials like metals or polymers. The ability of high thermal and chemical resistance and in case of being superior in specific mechanical properties makes the ceramic materials suitable for arange of applications. The microstructure and morphology of a material arguably permit the use of many advanced application otherwise difficult to achieve.Porous structures have some important applications in biomedical and environmental field. For human hard tissue reconstruction and augmentation procedure suitable biomaterials are used with a desirable porosity. A range of porous bioceramics were fabricated with tailored design to meet the demand of specific applications. Channeled and interconnected porosity was introduced in alumina, zirconia, and hydroxyapatite or tri calcium phosphate ceramics by different methods like multi-pass extrusion process, bubble formation in viscous slurry,slurry dripping in immiscible liquid, sponge replica method etc. The detailed microstructural and morphological investigations were carried out to establish the unique features of each method and the developed systems. For environmental filters the porous structures were also very important. We investigated a range of channeled and randomly porous silicon based ceramic composites to enhance the material stability and filtration efficiency by taking advantage of the material chemistry of the element. Detailed microstructural and mechanical characterizations were carried out for the fabricated porous filtration systems.