Ultrasonic irradiation enhanced cell nucleation: An effective approach to microcellular foams of both high cell density and expansion ratio

In this work, ultrasonic irradiation (UI) was used as the external energy source to assist polystyrene foaming process by using supercritical CO2 as the physical blowing agent. It is shown that by introducing the UI at the very start of foaming, the resultant polymer foam exhibited significant and concurrent increase in cell density, i.e., three orders of magnitude, and expansion ratio, i.e., 1-3 times, compared to those without UI. Further experiments indicate that the enhanced cell nucleation induced by UI was the main reason for this unique phenomenon. This method also provided new insight into the mechanism of cell nucleation.