Recemat International
RECEMAT® metal foam
RECEMAT metal foam may be produced in many different base materials. Many special foams such as copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, iron, cadmium and certain alloys such as iron-chrome, cobalt-chrome and nickel-copper have shown so little potential that they will only be produced to special order. The sheet sizes, grades and densities, however are limited.
The two materials which have been produced so far are Nickel foam and the alloyed version Nickel-Chromium. The main reason for this is the ease of production resulting in good reproducible materials and qualities.
The Nickel foam (Ni) has good qualities for batteries and electrolysis applications, due to its good conductance.
The Nickel-Chromium alloy has inherent good properties for use in structures where strength, high temperature resistance and corrosion resistance are required. It has been observed that RECEMAT NC is comparable in corrosion resistance with materials such as INCONEL.
When even better properties are required RECEMAT International has developed ways to alloy the base materials Nickel and Nickel-Chromium with other components. The type of material the base material will be alloyed with depends on the specific requirements of our clients.
This approach offers the possibility to upgrade the standard materials and get to material characteristics which are a requisite for certain applications.
An example of alloying with additional materials is Nickel-Chromium alloyed with Aluminium to improve oxidation resistance of the material at high temperatures, such as found in premixed gas burners.
Normally the Nickel foams will be supplied with densities which fall in the range of 0.4 ... 0.45 g/cm3. The Nickel-Chromium foams are normally supplied in densities which range from about 0.6 ... 0.65 g/cm3.
It should be noted that these densities are specific for the RECEMAT metal foam and are virtually independent of the pore size of the foam.
Porosity in its physical terms has been defined as the mass ratio between the porous material and the mass of same volume of base material. In view of the above densities it may be concluded that the porosity of RECEMAT metal foam is about constant over the full range of pore sizes available.
Most mechanical and physical properties will be dependant on the porosity as well as the size of the pores and at the same time of the thickness of the trigonal structured studs of the metal foam. These parameters govern all relations in an intriguing way.