Floating porous alumina from protein foaming-consolidation technique for cell culture application

Floating porous ceramics have been successfully fabricated using protein foaming-consolidation method. Alumina powder and yolk as the pore creator were mixed while stirring and the resulting slips were poured into cylindrical shaped molds followed by drying for foaming-consolidation process. The dried green bodies were then burned at 600 °C for 1 h to remove the pore creating agent and finally sintered at 1550 °C for 2 h. The sintered alumina ceramics with shrinkage in the range of 29–40 vol.% and pore sizes of 250–500 μm were obtained. The compressive strength of sample was 1.1 at 70.6% porosity and it increased to 1.7 MPa at 52.8% porosity. The density varied in the range of 0.8–1.1 g/cm3 depending on the composition of the slurry. Preliminary cytotoxicity test of the samples conducted using DF-1 cell culture showed promising results.