Designing with Pores - Synthesis and Applications

Abstract

Environment, energy, health and transport issues are dominating our modern daily live. The complex interactions of these problems can only be solved by sustainable processing and the development of improved components. Materials science will play an important role in this new approach. One domain with specific relevance is porous ceramics and metals. It is substrates with pores sizes ranging from vacancies at the atomic level to macro pores with sizes of millimeters. There are plenty of emerging applications for porous components in different industrial sectors. Each application will specify the window of properties of the porous material.This review is limited to inorganic porous materials which can be synthesized by dry and wet powder processing methods. In order to cope with this large application domain and window of properties, several processing and coating routes and related characterization techniques have been developed. The overview of applications for porous inorganic materials is focused on macro porous components with a designed functional coating. Examples of applications include catalytic supports, diesel particulate filters, molten metal filters, biomedical scaffolds for tissue engineering and ceramic membranes for different separation purposes.