Binder-free additive manufacturing of ceramics using hydrothermal-assisted jet fusion

Ceramic additive manufacturing (AM) typically uses a high fraction of organic binders to form pre-sintered green parts that require a post de-binding process to remove. The de-binding process inevitably results in severe gas expansion and residual chars, leading to structural defects, accumulated stress, and compromised material properties in the final parts. Here we report a binder-free additive manufacturing process named hydrothermal-assisted jet fusion (HJF) that utilizes a hydrothermal method to create geometrically and compositionally complex ceramics under mild temperatures. The HJF process employs a selectively deposited volatile dissolving ink, high pressure, and mild heat to strategically fuse a ceramic powder bed into complex geometries. Compared to traditional AM methods for ceramics, the HJF process eliminates the need for organic binders in green part fabrication and offers the potential to directly co-print ceramics with other dissimilar materials, such as polymers and metals, enabling the development of novel multi-functional ceramic composites.     

Additive manufacturing of alumina using laser engineered net shaping: Effects of deposition variables

Alumina ceramic has been classified as one of difficult-to-manufacturing materials, the traditional manufacturing methods led to high cost and high energy consumption. In comparison to traditional manufacturing methods, laser engineered net shaping (LENS) additive manufacturing (AM) has many good properties to overcome the drawbacks of traditional manufacturing methods. However, the reported investigations on LENS provide limited information for qualities of deposition. In this paper, effects of LENS input deposition variables (laser power, deposition head scanning speed, and powder feeding rate) on deposition quality (such as layer geometry, surface roughness, flatness, powder efficiency, and microhardness) were studied. The obtained results will help to establish an efficient and effective process for ceramics part manufacturing.     

Additive Manufacturing of Dense Alumina Ceramics

In this study, a new process for additive manufacturing (AM) of dense and strong ceramic objects is described. The lithography‐based ceramic manufacturing (LCM) technique is based on the selective curing of a photosensitive slurry by a dynamic mask exposure process. The LCM technique is able to produce strong, dense and accurate alumina ceramics without virtually any geometrical limitations. With over 99.3% of a theoretical alumina density, four‐point bending strength of 427 MPa, and very smooth surfaces, the LCM process distinguishes itself from other AM techniques for ceramics and provides parts with very similar mechanical properties as conventionally formed alumina.     

A review on laser deposition-additive manufacturing of ceramics and ceramic reinforced metal matrix composites

Ceramics and ceramic reinforced metal matrix composites (MMCs) are widely used in severe working conditions and have been applied in biomedical, aerospace, electronic, and other high-end engineering industries owing to their superior properties of high wear resistance, outstanding chemical inertness, and excellent properties at elevated temperatures. These superior properties, on the other hand, make it difficult to process these materials with conventional manufacturing methods, posing problems of high cost and energy consumptions. In response to this problem, direct additive manufacturing (AM), which is equipped with a high-power-density laser beam as heat source, has been developed and extensively employed for processing ceramics and ceramic reinforced MMCs. Compared with other direct AM processes, laser deposition-additive manufacturing (LD-AM) process excels in several aspects, such as lower labor intensity, higher fabrication efficiency, and capabilities of parts remanufacturing and functionally gradient composite materials fabrication. Besides these benefits, problems of poor bonding, cracking, lowered toughness, etc. still exist in LD-AM fabricated parts. This paper reviews developments on LD-AM of ceramics and ceramic reinforced MMCs in both bulk parts fabrication and cladding. Main issues to be solved, corresponding solutions, and the trend of development are summarized and discussed.     

Additive manufacturing of ceramics: Advances,challenges, and outlook

Additive manufacturing (AM) of ceramics is relatively more challenging with respect to polymers and metals, owing to their high melting temperatures and inherent brittleness. Thus, this review aims to provide a comprehensive survey of recent AM technologies successfully employed to produce net shape ceramic components. In recent years, several techniques have been developed and the latest progress in this field are highlighted, as well as the current challenges in the complex shaped ceramic parts production via AM technologies. The state of the art concerning the various 3D printing processes applied to the fabrication of ceramic components is discussed with, for each method, the presentation of its advantages, disadvantages, and possible applications. The potential of AM for producing complex shape ceramic components and the challenges to overcome are discussed as well.     

Additive manufacturing of ceramic materials for energy applications: Road map and opportunities

Among engineering materials, ceramics are indispensable in energy applications such as batteries, capacitors, solar cells, smart glass, fuel cells and electrolyzers, nuclear power plants, thermoelectrics, thermoionics, carbon capture and storage, control of harmful emission from combustion engines, piezoelectrics, turbines and heat exchangers, among others. Advances in additive manufacturing (AM) offer new opportunities to fabricate these devices in geometries unachievable previously and may provide higher efficiencies and performance, all at lower costs. This article reviews the state of the art in ceramic materials for various energy applications. The focus of the review is on material selections, processing, and opportunities for AM technologies in energy related ceramic materials manufacturing. The aim of the article is to provide a roadmap for stakeholders such as industry, academia and funding agencies on research and development in additive manufacturing of ceramic materials toward more efficient, cost-effective, and reliable energy systems.     

Non-destructive optical second harmonic generation imaging of 3D printed aluminum nitride ceramics

Aluminum nitride (AlN) ceramics have attracted broad interest due to their potential applications in electronics. Additive manufacturing of ceramic components are rapidly advancing, could provide a new way of manufacturing over conventional methods. Non-destructive testing of 3D printed ceramic samples is an important step for quality control in manufacturing. Here we show that AlN ceramics show strong optical second harmonic generation (SHG) signals due to its wurtzite crystal structure. Microscopic SHG imaging can also examine the microscopy domains in AlN ceramics with submicron spatial resolution. This technique has the potential to be applied as a non-destructive testing method for examining 3D printed AlN ceramic components.     

Additive Manufacturing of Ceramics: Issues,Potentialities, and Opportunities

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a technology which has the potential not only to change the way of conventional industrial manufacturing processes, adding material instead of subtracting, but also to create entirely new production and business strategies. Since about three decades, AM technologies have been used to fabricate prototypes or models mostly from polymeric or metallic materials. Recently, products have been introduced into the market that cannot be produced in another way than additively. Ceramic materials are, however, not easy to process by AM technologies, as their processing requirements (in terms of feedstock and/or sintering) are very challenging. On the other hand, it can be expected that AM technologies, once successful, will have an extraordinary impact on the industrial production of ceramic components and, moreover, will open for ceramics new uses and new markets.     

Additive manufacturing of polymer-derived ceramic matrix composites

This study presents a fabrication method and identifies processing bounds for additively manufacturing (AM) ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), comprising a silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) ceramic matrix. A digital light projection printer was used to photopolymerize a siloxane-based preceramic resin containing inert ceramic reinforcement. A subsequent pyrolysis converted the preceramic polymer to SiOC. Particle reinforcements of 0 to 40% by volume in the green state were uniformly dispersed in the printed samples to study their effects on pyrolysis mass loss and shrinkage, and CMC notch sensitivity and strength. Both particle and whisker reinforcements toughened the glassy SiOC matrix (1 MPa m^1/2), reaching values >3 MPa m^1/2. Bending strengths of >300 MPa (>150 MPa (g cm⁻³)⁻¹) and a Weibull modulus of 10 were measured on AM samples without surface finish. We identified two pore formation mechanisms that placed processing bounds on sample size and reinforcement volume fraction. Methods for increasing these bounds are discussed. With properties commensurate to traditionally processed technical ceramics, the presented process allows for free-form fabrication of high-performance AM CMC components.     

陶瓷增材制造

陶瓷的脆性和高硬度使得传统陶瓷成型工艺不易制备具有复杂形状和结构的陶瓷制件。本文总结了目前发展较快的激光选区熔融、激光选区烧结、三维打印、立体光固化、自由挤出成型等增材制造工艺在陶瓷领域的研究进展。面向复杂结构和高性能陶瓷制品的定制化快速制造需求,陶瓷增材制造技术展现出极大优势,在传统陶瓷行业、生物医疗等领域得到了应用。但是,陶瓷增材制造仍面临着打印材料及大尺寸、高致密度复杂结构陶瓷零件制造等难题,这些也将是增材制造技术未来发展的重要研究方向。     

Additive manufacturing of periodic ceramic substrates for automotive catalyst supports

Additive manufacturing (AM) has the potential to revolutionize engineering because of its advantages in the product development phase. The revolution consists in the new approach of components’ design by function and no longer by manufacturability. This is the motivation driving authors to design and realize by additive manufacturing a new catalyst support for automotive exhausts which is no longer constrained by the industrial manufacturing methods and thus allows an optimized flow of the exhaust gasses. This work presents a new class of periodic cellular ceramic substrates. To authors’ knowledge this is the first time such kind of structures are employed in the automotive field. After a review the different ceramic AM techniques which are currently utilized in the production of highly complex ceramic architectures, the most suited one was selected and several samples were produced by AM. They were finally characterized via microscopic analysis (SEM, CT) compression tests revealing the best printing configuration for their mechanical behavior.     

New observations on wear characteristics of solid Al2O3/Si3N4 ceramic tool in high speed milling of additive manufactured Ti6Al4V

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies applied to the titanium alloys have attracted attention from industries in recent years. Despite one of the main goals of AM is the reduction of manufacturing steps, semi-finish/finish machining operations are still required so as to obtain the desired geometrical tolerance and surface features. In this study, the solid end mill was manufactured by Al₂O₃/Si₃N₄ (Sialon) ceramic materials and employed in high-speed slot milling of Ti6Al4V alloy fabricated by the Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) AM technology to study the tool wear characteristics during processing. The Raman spectroscopic method was employed to characterize the molecular structures of Sialon ceramics for the manufacturing of the cutting tool. The morphologies and elemental maps of wear region of the ceramic tool were examined by scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectroscopy techniques. The results show that the adhesion wear and diffusion wear are the dominant wear mechanisms, and the chemical stability of Al₂O₃/Si₃N₄ (Sialon) ceramics fabricated as the solid ceramic tool to the attack of the atoms from additive manufactured Ti6Al4V is relatively weak under the atmosphere. The difference of thermal expansion coefficients of diffusion layer and tool substrate accelerates the initiation and propagation of thermal cracks formed on the diffusion interface. Moreover, fracturing and crater-like groves near the tool edge were finally formed due to the removal of adhered workpiece material.     

Additive manufacturing of green ceramic by selective laser gasifying of frozen slurry

The slurry-based additive manufacturing (AM) of ceramics involves a drying process to form solid support; however, the drying process is time-consuming, and the support is not easily removed. We propose a new AM process for green ceramic that includes freezing a layer of aqueous ceramic slurry, laser gasifying of the frozen-layer ice to process 2D green ware, and removing the support in water to release the 3D ceramic part. With a suitable laser power and scanning speed, this approach can yield a layer that has a thickness of 90 μm, a cantilever structure with a wall thickness of 115 μm and a span of 30 mm without deflection. The casting layer cannot be damaged by using a cryopanel to rapidly freeze the slurry, and redundant frozen materials can be melted in water without swelling. Therefore, this new process can rapidly form a solid support and has a high removal efficiency.     

Improving ceramic additive manufacturing via machine learning-enabled closed-loop control

Advanced ceramic products are widely used in aerospace, automotive, electronic, laboratory equipment, and other industries. To achieve the geometric complexity and desirable properties that are difficult to obtain by conventional manufacturing methods, ceramic additive manufacturing (AM) methods have been studied intensively in recent years. However, the adaptive control with feedback is not currently implemented in any commercially available ceramic three-dimensional printer. Robocasting is one of the most widely utilized constant-volumetric-flow AM processes for creating various ceramic materials at a low cost. This study employed robocasting as a model to implement an adaptive control with a feedback loop in the ceramic AM process. In this research, processing load that was proportional to the processing pressure, width of the print, and length of extrusion were selected to be representative of process signal, quality signal, and control parameter, respectively. First, a database of the load and extrusion length was established. An artificial neural network model was created using that established database. The data-driven, closed-loop control was integrated into the robocasting process. Finally, the improvement was validated by comparing the quality of the prints produced by both the closed-loop process with the adaptive control and the open-loop process without the adaptive control.     

Experimental additive manufacturing of green body of SiC/Graphite functionally graded materials by stereolithography

Ceramic stereolithography (CSL)-additive manufacturing (AM) technology is used to create a functionally graded ceramic (FGC) green body made of silicon carbide (SiC) and graphite. For the SiC/graphite FGC, the mixing parameters of ceramics powders and ultraviolet (UV) curing resin are improved, and correlations of the resultant slurry curing depth with integrated light intensity are discovered. Therefore, the SiC/graphite FGC-produced green body has no flaws, pores, or cracks on its surfaces. According to the association between cure depth and integrated light density for each slurry's composition, several interfacial collapses discovered in a cracked cross-section might be decreased.     

Additive manufacturing of fiber reinforced ceramic matrix composites: Advances,challenges, and prospects

Fiber reinforced ceramic matrix composites (FRCMCs) have been used in various engineering fields. Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies provide new methods for fabricating FRCMCs and their structures. This review systematically reviews the additive manufacturing technologies of FRCMCs. In this review, the progress for additive manufacturing of FRCMCs were summarized firstly. The key scientific and technological challenges, and prospects were also discussed. This review aims to motivate the future research of the additive manufacturing of FRCMCs.     

In situ 4D tomography image analysis framework to follow sintering within 3D-printed glass scaffolds

We propose a novel image analysis framework to automate analysis of X-ray microtomography images of sintering ceramics and glasses, using open-source toolkits and machine learning. Additive manufacturing (AM) of glasses and ceramics usually requires sintering of green bodies. Sintering causes shrinkage, which presents a challenge for controlling the metrology of the final architecture. Therefore, being able to monitor sintering in 3D over time (termed 4D) is important when developing new porous ceramics or glasses. Synchrotron X-ray tomographic imaging allows in situ, real-time capture of the sintering process at both micro and macro scales using a furnace rig, facilitating 4D quantitative analysis of the process. The proposed image analysis framework is capable of tracking and quantifying the densification of glass or ceramic particles within multiple volumes of interest (VOIs) along with structural changes over time using 4D image data. The framework is demonstrated by 4D quantitative analysis of bioactive glass ICIE16 within a 3D-printed scaffold. Here, densification of glass particles within 3 VOIs were tracked and quantified along with diameter change of struts and interstrut pore size over the 3D image series, delivering new insights on the sintering mechanism of ICIE16 bioactive glass particles in both micro and macro scales.     

CerAMfacturing of silicon nitride by using lithography-based ceramic vat photopolymerization (CerAM VPP)

Hardness, high mechanical strength, wear and corrosion resistance, for instance, are the most important properties of silicon nitride. Next to technical application, the material becomes more and more important for medical applications, especially for implants and the focus in research for this increase steadily. Up to now, the demands on the geometry of silicon nitride-based components could largely be met by using conventional shaping methods such as pressing and green machining or injection moulding. However, requirements in terms of complexity and function are constantly increasing. By using additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, the complexity of components can be significantly increased and additional functions such as transport channels or features like triple periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS), which seem to be advantageous for osseointegration can be integrated, for instances. High-resolution AM processes such as stereolithography enable the production of very accurate and complex ceramic components. In this work a silicon nitride suspension suitable for biomedical applications was developed and the influence of the formulation on the properties (especially flow and curing behavior) were analyzed. Afterwards, various test samples were generated by ceramic additive manufacturing via vat photopolymerization (CerAM VPP), thermally processed and the sintered parts were characterized with common ceramic methods, like mechanical tests and microstructure analyses, showing satisfying results for the described development state.     

Fabrication of dense SiSiC ceramics by a hybrid additive manufacturing process

In this work, we report the fabrication of Silicon infiltrated Silicon Carbide (SiSiC) components by a hybrid additive manufacturing process. Selective laser sintering of polyamide powders was used to 3D print a polymeric preform with controlled relative density, which allows manufacturing geometrically complex parts with small features. Preceramic polymer infiltration with a silicon carbide precursor followed by pyrolysis (PIP) was used to convert the preform into an amorphous SiC ceramic, and five PIP cycles were performed to increase the relative density of the part. The final densification was achieved via liquid silicon infiltration (LSI) at 1500°C, obtaining a SiSiC ceramic component without change of size and shape distortion. The crystallization of the previously generated SiC phase, with associated volume change, allowed to fully infiltrate the part leading to an almost fully dense material consisting of β-SiC and Si in the volume fraction of 45% and 55% respectively. The advantage of this approach is the possibility of manufacturing SiSiC ceramics directly from the preceramic precursor, without the need of adding ceramic powder to the infiltrating solution. This can be seen as an alternative AM approach to Binder jetting and direct ink writing for the production of templates to be further processed by silicon infiltration.     

Lithography-based ceramic manufacturing (LCM) – Viscosity and cleaning as two quality influencing steps in the process chain of printing green parts

The advantages of suspension based Additive Manufacturing (AM), e.g. the lithography-based ceramic manufacturing (LCM), are high structural resolution, and compared to other available AM techniques, the manufacturing of dense (>99%) ceramic components with high performance. This novel manufacturing technique permits innovative designs, new types of ceramic components, and offers a range of new applications; like micro reactors, catalyst supporting structures or heat exchangers, as well as cutting edge biomedical devices and personalized medical products. Some examples of personalized medical products are customised ceramic knee implants or custom spinal fusion implants. Producing these implants using LCM would allow product offerings not possible before. However, the LCM process chain includes several open points, which have to be solved, in order to get high quality end results. In this paper, the development of suspensions (curable slurries) based on different binders, and the procedures for cleaning printed parts are thoroughly considered.