Thin Titanium Porous Sheet Debinding for Compression and Permeability
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing titanium porous bodies used in water electrolysis devices suffer from poor compression resistance, leading to decreased gas and liquid permeability due to surface wrinkles and defects during high-temperature sintering, which affects production yield and device performance.
Innovation Solution
A method involving sequential drying, debinding, and sintering steps with front-to-back surface inversion of the formed body to volatilize organic binders effectively, enhancing compression resistance and permeability while reducing defects.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If the sintering temperature is increased to improve compression resistance, then compression resistance is improved, but surface wrinkles and defects occur resulting in lower production yield
Solution Approach 1:
The organic binder is selectively removed from the lower surface before sintering by inverting the formed body during debinding. This preliminary removal of binder prevents it from interfering with titanium powder contact during subsequent high-temperature sintering, enabling compression resistance improvement without surface defects
Solution Approach 2:
The formed body is inverted during the debinding process so that the lower surface (which had binder accumulation during drying) becomes the upper surface. This inversion allows the accumulated binder to be selectively removed from what becomes the upper surface, preventing binder interference during sintering and enabling defect-free high-compression-resistance sintering
2Strength
If the sintering temperature is increased to improve compression resistance, then compression resistance is improved, but surface wrinkles occur resulting in decreased gas and liquid permeability
Solution Approach 1:
The organic binder is removed from the lower surface before sintering by inverting the formed body during debinding. This preliminary removal prevents binder interference with titanium powder contact during high-temperature sintering, enabling compression resistance improvement without surface wrinkles that would block pores and reduce permeability
3Volume of moving object
If a thin sheet form is used to downsize equipment, then equipment size is reduced, but compression resistance deteriorates leading to thickness and shape maintenance issues
Solution Approach 1:
The sintering temperature is increased to a relatively high level to improve compression resistance of the thin sheet. The inverted debinding process enables this high-temperature sintering without surface defects, allowing thin sheets to achieve sufficient compression resistance to maintain thickness and shape under device operating conditions
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The method produces titanium porous bodies with improved compression resistance and gas/liquid permeability, maintaining required thickness and shape under compressive forces, with higher production yield and reduced surface defects.
Implementation Method 1
a debinding step of heating the formed body on the placing surface in a direction where front and back surfaces of the formed body are inverted relative to the direction on the placing surface in the drying step to volatilize the organic binder in the formed body
Implementation Method 2
a sintering step of heating the formed body after the debinding step to sinter the titanium powder in the formed body
Data Source
AI summary
A titanium porous body according to this invention is in a form of a sheet, and has a thickness t of 0.50 mm or less, a projected area of a surface on a plane of 28,000 mm2 or more, an irreversible deformation amount after being pressurized at 100 MPa of 1.0% or less, and an air permeability P (µm/Pa·S) satisfying a relationship P ≥ I between the permeability P and an index value I, and the index value I is represented by I = 1.6 × (1/t)i.3.