Production of open cell Nickel-based metal foam from polyurethane template

Metal foam is a novel class of metals that is inspired by naturally occurring, functionally graded, cellular structures like wood and bones. The potential applications of metal foam are diverse, especially in the field of filtration at high temperature and corrosive environments; hence the study of metal foams has become attractive to researchers and efforts are being made to optimize the methodology to develop the metal foam. Various methods of production of metal foam have surfaced over the past few years. Electro deposition technique is considered the easiest and economical ways to produce metal foam. Also, attributing to the outstanding corrosion resistant properties exhibited by Nickel, it has been selected as the base material in this manuscript. Step by step process know-how of electro deposition technique, characterization to investigate integrity parameters at each step, challenges encountered during production and their solution to optimize the process are presented in this paper. Quality foam with 10.22 MPa strength and 92% porosity after the sintering process was produced.