Evaluation of the in situ polymerization kinetics for the gelcasting of ceramic foams

Recent processing technologies have employed the in situ polymerization of organic monomers to consolidate particulate suspensions of ceramics into de nse and strong bodies. The same principle has been applied to solidify foam ed ceramic suspensions with great success. In this work, the parameters tha t influence the polymerization kinetics of acrylic monomers were investigat ed in systems containing the separate components of a ceramic suspension, w ith and without the generation of foam. The main objective was to obtain co ntrol of the onset time for polymerization (I-d), which is a critical facto r in the processing of foamed ceramics. Analysis of the exothermic profiles registered during polymerization revealed that the polymerization onset is markedly influenced by a number of variables, including the solids concent ration, initial temperature, pH, and oxygen concentration.