Fig. 2: Manufacturing and characterization of cellular ceramic metamaterials.
From: A bioinspired surface tension-driven route toward programmed cellular ceramics
a Illustration of the STATS manufacturing process in a section view, including precursor solution capture, sol-gel transition, and high-temperature sintering. b Density variation during the sol-gel transition and sintering. c Temperature profile and thermogravimetric (TG) curves during the sintering process. Inset optical images show the morphology evolution of the samples. d Optical images and SEM images of the sintered architected ceramics, showing a globally cellular shell structure and locally compact ceramic grain. e The variation of shell thickness of the sintered cellular ceramics along with the precursor solution concentration, at a 1 mm frame length and 0.1 mm frame radius of the organic lattice. Error bars are standard deviation and include 16 independent measurements for each composition. Insets show the SEM images of the cellular ceramics with shell structure and layer-by-layer characteristic. Scale bar, 200 μm. f, The manufactured cellular ceramics with various cell sizes, cell geometries, relative densities, three-dimensional (3D) metastructures and constituent elements.
