Syntactic foams for multifunctional applications

Abstract

Owing to their lightweight and high strength characteristics and tailorable end-use properties, rigid syntactic foams fabricated from polymeric binders, hollow micro-spheres, and other fillers, and their variants have assumed great importance in material design. The highly ordered syntactic foams have potential to be utilized in designs involving multifunctional requirements, viz., aerospace structures, radar transparency, microwave electronics, EMI shielding, etc. This overview article introduces syntactic foams and gives an insight into establishing multifunctional characteristics in them to meet the end applications and presents a collection of related literature on techniques and uses.