Freiburg scientist publishes in Nature Reviews Methods Primers
Bioinspired cellular materials, characterized by their hierarchical structure, exhibit superior mechanical properties and a great variety of functions, making them promising in applications from medical devices to environment and energy-related technologies. Freeze casting, where the materials are templated by the directionally solidified ice crystals, generate structures in multiple hierarchies, allowing custom design of materials structural, mechanical and functional properties for specific applications.
IMTEK researcher and Humboldt Research Fellow, Dr. Kaiyang Yin, together with Prof. Ulrike G.K. Wegst (Northeastern University, USA and TU Berlin), Dr. Francisco García-Moreno, and Dr. Paul Kamm (TU Berlin and Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin), were invited and recently published a new guide in Nature Reviews Methods Primers (impact factor 39.8). The guide provides an overview of the freeze casting process with a particular highlight on in situ observation during the hierarchical structure formation enabled by X-ray tomoscopy.
This article, like all others in the journal, is expected to provide an introductory overview of the state-of-the-art freeze casting methods, applications, best practices for experimentation, reproducibility and data deposition, and an outlook, offering all relevant information needed to evaluate, adopt and build on the method. The authors expect this to facilitate the understanding and applying of freeze casting for researchers at all career stage and for a boarder range of interdisciplinary research.
Link to the article:
Wegst, U.G.K., Kamm, P.H., Yin, K., García-Moreno, F., Freeze casting. Nat Rev Methods Primers 4, 28 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-024-00307-5
Contact:
Kaiyang Yin, Ph.D.
Post-doctoral Researcher
Laboratory for Micro and Materials Mechanics
Department of Microsystems Engineering – IMTEK
Faculty of Engineering
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Tel: 0761/203- 98561
E-Mail: kaiyang.yin@imtek.uni-freiburg.de
Kerstin Steiger-Merx
Representative PR/Marketing
Faculty of Engineering
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Tel.: 0761/203-8056
E-Mail: steiger-merx@tf.uni-freiburg.de