Ice-templated additive-free porous starches with tuned morphology and properties

Biodegradable anisotropic neat porous starch materials without any additional cross-linking, plasticizer or extra matter have been fabricated via facile ice-templating method. Waxy maize was dissolved in water followed by unidirectional freezing and ice sublimation. The influence of process parameters (starch concentration retrogradation time) on the morphology, density, mechanical properties under uniaxial compression thermal conductivity were investigated. internal morphology shape pores, from lamellar to sponge-like, shown be governed concentration. All starches very low density (0.07–0.15 g/cm3), conductivity, particular transverse direction (0.037–0.048 W/(m·K)). Interestingly, when compressing ice-templated direction, further decreased reaching values 0.033 W/(m·K). This work provides guidelines for making fully biobased with controlled properties.