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Porous materials with random architecture: from computer-design to intriguing properties and applications
Abstract
Porous materials with heterogeneous pore features are ubiquitously used in many branches of technology, from lightweight structures to biomedical implants and electrodes. These materials derive their properties from their internal porous architecture, which is often poorly controlled via conventional manufacturing routes (e.g. foaming, templating). Additive manufacturing coupled with computer design can help overcome this issue enabling the fabrication of porous materials with complex, yet precisely-controlled, geometrical features.
Here, we first present a palette of numerical methods that, relying on a random generation algorithm combined with computational homogenization, enable the design of material structures with a variety of pore features. The latter include particulate solids with random distributions of porous inclusions as well as Voronoi-like cellular architectures. We show how these materials can be realized experimentally by means of additive manufacturing technologies - from polymer 3D-printing to metal laser powder bed fusion - and demonstrate experimentally their beneficial mechanical properties. The latter comprise notably an optimal stiffness scaling with density and a high damage-tolerance.
Finally, we highlight the suitability of this design approach for the practical exploration of novel architected porous electrodes, which find use in electrochemical energy storage devices and constitute the current focus of our work.