Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 35: SYBM Bioinspired Materials

MM 35.8: Talk

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 16:45–17:00, H16

Hierarchical ceramics from biomimetic processing of wood — •Oskar Paris, Atul Deshpande, and Ingo Burgert — Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Department of Biomaterials, Potsdam, Germany

The processing of plant tissues has been used since hundreds of years to obtain useful materials such as paper and activated carbons. The rich structural hierarchy of plant tissues makes them ideal as scaffolds or casting moulds for the synthesis of hierarchically structured inorganic materials based on carbon or ceramics. Besides potential applications as lightweight nanocomposites for structural applications, such materials are typically porous at several length scales, making them interesting candidates for catalysts and filters. A major challenge in the synthesis process of such materials is to preserve the hierarchical plant structure at all levels while retaining the mechanical integrity. We have used wood tissue as a casting mould for the synthesis of hierarchical mesoporous oxide ceramics with directional porosity on the micrometer and the nanometre scale. In particular, we could demonstrate that the entire structure of the wood tissue including the spiralling microfibrillar orientation of the cellulose fibrils can be transformed into a mesoporous Ce0.5Zr0.5O2 ceramic [1].

[1] A. Deshpande, I. Burgert, O. Paris, Small 2 (2006) 994.