In this paper the chemo-rheological behavior of aqueous TiC suspension and physical properties of gelcasted green body were investigated. The monomer system used in this project was acrylamide (AM) and methylenebisacrylamide (MBAM). Polymerisation reaction was promoted by the addition of tetramethyl ethylenediamine as a catalyst and ammonium persulfate as a initiator. The effects of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), polyethylenimine (PEI) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) dispersants on the premix solution containing TiC powder have been studied via observation of the zeta potential and rheological behavior. The optimal amount of TMAH was achieved 0.4 wt.% at pH 9. The chemorheological results showed that the gelation time decreased and viscosity increased with increasing the monomer content, solid loading, initiator amount and temperature. The highest flexural strength of gel casted green body was obtained with 50 vol% solid loading and 25 wt.% monomers content.

In this work, gel-casting of foams method was used to produce ZrO2 porous ceramics. The obtained foams with total porosity of 89.5 vol% were composed of approximately spherical cells having the mean diameter of 537 ± 153 μm interconnected by circular cell windows having the mean diameter of 152 ± 82 μm. Next, the ZrO2 foams were coated with fluorapatite (FA) and hydroxyapatite (HA) layers by slurry infiltration. The intermediate fluorapatite (FA) layer was introduced to prevent the chemical reactions between ZrO2 and HA at high temperatures during sintering process. The ZrO2 samples containing only HA coatings, were also tested, for comparison. The obtained ceramic biomaterials were subjected to in vitro tests in the simulated body fluid (SBF) solution. The results show that the ZrO2 foams with FA/HA layers possessed better bioactivity than the foams with the HA/HA coating.