Helical and Bouligand Porous Scaffolds Fabricated by Dynamic Low Strength Magnetic Field Freeze Casting

Porous Fe3O4 scaffolds were fabricated while subject to a low (7.8 mT) magnetic field applied in helical and Bouligand motions using a custom-built tri-axial nested Helmholtz coils-based freeze-casting setup. This setup allowed for the control of a dynamic, uniform low-strength magnetic field to align particles during the freezing process, resulting in the majority of lamellar walls aligning within ± 30° of the magnetic field direction and a decrease in porosity by up to 42%. Similar to how helical and Bouligand structures in nature promote impact resistance, these magnetic field motions produced structures with improved high strain rate mechanical properties. Strain at failure was increased by up to 2 times as cracks deflected to match the applied angles of rotation of the magnetic field