thumb|upright=2.0|Freeze-cast alumina that has been partially sintered. The freezing direction in the image is up.
thumb|upright=2.0|Freeze-cast alumina that has been partially sintered. The freezing direction in the image is up.
Freeze-casting, also frequently referred to as ice-templating, is a technique that exploits the highly anisotropic solidification behavior of a solvent (often, but not exclusively, water) in a well-dispersed solution or slurry to controllably template directionally porous ceramics, polymers, metals and their hybrids. By subjecting an aqueous suspension or slurry to a directional temperature gradient, ice crystals will nucleate on one side and grow along the temperature gradient. The ice crystals will redistribute the dissolved substance and the suspended particles as they grow within the solution or slurry, effectively templating the ingredients that are distributed in the suspension or slurry.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).