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Structure–processing relationships of freeze-cast iron foams fabricated with various solidification rates and post-casting heat treatment

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Abstract

Iron foams are potential materials for the production, purification, and recuperation of hydrogen through redox systems. They are inexpensive, recyclable, and environmentally friendly. Nevertheless, iron foams cannot be employed repeatedly for redox cycling at high temperatures because the structure suffers morphological changes and a decrease in the effective porosity. In this work, two different pore structures of Fe-foams fabricated by freeze-casting have been produced: constant (CP) and gradient (GP) pore size. CP Fe-foams were obtained by employing a double-sided cooling technique to minimize gradients in pore width that result when using one-sided, constant cooling solidification techniques. GP Fe-foams were manufactured using a fixed-temperature cold plate. Optical microscopy and X-ray tomography were employed to characterize the pore structure and, for GP Fe-foams, to investigate the effect of redox cycling. After redox cycling, GP Fe-foams exhibited significant pore degradation.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support for this work has been provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO), through the project MAT2016-76713-P, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF CMMI-1562941). P.J. also thanks the Universidad de Sevilla for financial support (Grant PIF II.2A, through VI Plan Propio de Investigación). This work made use of the MatCI Facility at Northwestern University, which receives support from the MRSEC Program (NSF DMR-1720139). Tomography experiments were performed at the DuPont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT), Sector 5 of the Advanced Photon Source, operated by Argonne National Laboratory (DOE DE-AC02-06CH11357). The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. William Guise (DND-CAT) for assistance in collecting and processing the tomography data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Engineering and Science, E.T.S. de Ingenieros, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, 41092, Spain

    P.J. Lloreda-Jurado, A. Paúl-Escolano & R. Sepúlveda

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60208, USA

    P.J. Lloreda-Jurado, S.K. Wilke, K. Scotti & D.C. Dunand

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  1. P.J. Lloreda-Jurado
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  2. S.K. Wilke
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  3. K. Scotti
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  4. A. Paúl-Escolano
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  5. D.C. Dunand
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  6. R. Sepúlveda
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Correspondence to R. Sepúlveda.

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Lloreda-Jurado, P., Wilke, S., Scotti, K. et al. Structure–processing relationships of freeze-cast iron foams fabricated with various solidification rates and post-casting heat treatment. Journal of Materials Research 35, 2587–2596 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2020.175

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