Sugar Crystals as a Space Holder Material for Ti Void Metal Composites

The paper presents a new procedure for void metal composite (VMC) formation. Table sugar crystals (saccharose) as a space holder material that forms voids around Ti scaffold have been used. In the process, the Ti with sugar particles were mixed together and uniaxially pressed to make green compacts composed of the Ti and sugar grains. The voids in the compacts were then made by dissolving sugar crystals in water. Such titanium scaffold was sintered at 1300 degrees C, and a Ti-VMC was made with homogenously distributed uniform voids of diameter of up to 1 mm. Sugar particles of polyhedral and spherical shape were applied for voids formation and the sugar shape was controlled by the sugar mixing process. Thus, after compacting of the Ti powder with proper sugar crystals, the voids of polyhedral or spherical shape were achieved. The authors show that the compression strength of the Ti-VMC of 75% porosity depends on the shape of the voids and is higher for polyhedral than for spherical sugar spacers, whereas the Young's modulus is higher for spherical voids.