Application of sodium alginate gelation to aqueous tape casting

Abstract A novel gel tape casting process has been developed by introducing sodium alginate into a conventional aqueous tape casting slurry. The process makes use of a binder system consisting of 1 wt-% sodium alginate and 20 vol.-% styrene acrylic latex to prepare the tape casting slurry. Sodium alginate can react with calcium iodate to form a three-dimensional network at room temperature, and with the ceramic particles held in this three-dimensional network, the slurry can be consolidated to form green tapes. This allows the need for the special drying procedure that is usually a critical step in tape casting to be avoided. Styrene acrylic latex was used to improve the flexibility of the green tapes. Compared with tapes obtained by conventional aqueous tape casting, more homogeneous microstructure was obtained by this process.