Sustainable production of titanium foams for biomedical applications by Concentrated Solar Energy sintering

摘要

Porous titanium foams were successfully sintered using a solar parabolic concentrator, of vertical axis and 2 kW power, in argon atmosphere. Green pellets were previously prepared following the space holder powder manufacturing route using NaCl as soluble spacer. Titanium foams were fully sintered at lower temperature and shorter time than in conventional furnace sintering. Moreover, porosity achieved ranges between 58% and 77%, with dual size range: larger porous ranging from 500 to 1000 µm resulting from the NaCl particles; and smaller porous of 1–10 µm due to the powder sintering. Both the porosity and the porous size obtained for titanium foams produced by solar sintering fulfil the requirements for load-bearing and scaffold applications in tissue engineering.