Increased Microporosity in Ceramic and Metal Foams: A Novel Processing Combination

Abstract

Copper, aluminum, and alumina foams are prepared by a combination of reticulated foaming and freezing processing. This results in all of these foams in an additional strut porosity consisting of lamellar pores and material lamellae; the lamellar pores enable designed access to the inner volume of the struts. To increase the functionality in terms of enlarging the total surface area and increasing the adsorption activity, the foams are loaded with microporous materials by direct crystallization: the copper foams are combined with the metal organic framework HKUST‐1, the aluminum foams are combined with the zeolite SAPO‐34, and the alumina foams are combined with the zeolite silicalite‐1. All microporous materials are shown to access the inner strut pore surface area. Because of different crystal sizes of the different microporous materials, the load of the inner strut surface area varies significantly.