A wax-mold route to fabricate polymer-derived SiC scaffold

A wax-mold route was developed to fabricate phenolic resin-derived SiC scaffold. Firstly, a wax-mold with the desired structure of the scaffold was obtained. Then resin mixtures were poured into the mold. After curing and pyrolyzing, porous carbon preform was obtained. The wax-mold was removed through being melted during curing, and the pattern material could be recycled. Finally, the SiC scaffold was fabricated by infiltrating liquid silicon into the preform. The dimension shrinkage of SiC scaffold was between 1.3 and 3 % before/after infiltration, which was affected by the infiltrating temperature and the starting components in resin mixtures, and there is no distortion. When the preform with apparent porosity of 45.5% was employed, the flexural strength and the density of SiC scaffold were 445 MPa and 3.07 g/cm³, respectively.