Recent progress of solidification of suspensions

Suspensions include solvent and uniformly dispersed particles. Solidification of suspensions is to freeze the solvent while numerous particles disturb the pattern formation during the growth of the solid/liquid interface. It is a new interdisciplinary subject, involving the fields of freeze-casting porous materials, frost heaving, sea ice and biological tissue engineering and so on. Especially in recent years, many advanced materials with excellent properties were developed based on the processing of suspension solidification. Experimental phenomenon in suspension solidification is different from that in alloy solidification, such as the close-packed particle layer and self assembly, the ice lamellae structure and the periodic ice lenses and so on. Up to now, the formation mechanisms of these microstructures are still unclear. In this paper, we first review the historical development of suspension solidification in theory and in experiment. Then we demonstrate some recent progress of microstructural evolution and dynamical particle packing of suspension solidification. Finally, the outlooks of the future study on solidification of suspensions are also presented.