  What is pressure generated by ice crystals during ice-templating? This work
addresses this crucial question by estimating the pressure exerted by oriented
ice columns on a supramolecular probe composed of a lipid lamellar hydrogel
during directional freezing. This process, also known as freeze-casting, has
emerged as a unique processing technique for a broad class of organic,
inorganic, soft and biological materials. Nonetheless, the pressure exerted
during and after crystallization between two ice columns is not known, despite
its importance with respect to the fragility of the frozen material, especially
for biological samples. By using the lamellar period of a glycolipid lamellar
hydrogel as a common probe, we couple data obtained from ice-templated-resolved
in situ synchrotron Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) with data obtained from
controlled adiabatic dessication experiments. We estimate the pressure to vary
between 1 $\pm$ 10% kbar at-15{\textdegree}C and 3.5 $\pm$ 20% kbar
at-60{\textdegree}C.

Soft Condensed Matter