Thin metal/ceramic hybrid membrane sheet and filter

Abstract

A thin micro-porous membrane sheet and filtering device using it is presented. The membrane sheet includes a thin porous metal sheet of thickness between 20 and 200 μm with a porous ceramic coating of thickness less than 25 μm on at least one of its surfaces. The porous metal sheet has mean pore sizes at micro and sub-micrometer level and has a surface substantially free of pores greater than 10 micrometers. The ceramic coating layer may be made of particles with a mean particle size in a range of 10 to 300 nm and contains certain sintering promoters. The ceramic coating is sintered with the metal sheet in non-oxidizing environment at lower temperatures than typical ceramic membranes. The thin membrane sheet is used to filter fine particulates from micrometers to nanometers from a liquid or gas stream. The thin membrane sheet may be assembled into a filter device having high surface area packing density and straight mini-flow channels.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.