Digital light processing of lunar regolith structures with high mechanical properties

It is highly desirable to establish an extraterrestrial base on the moon due to its practicality and scientific significance in the future space explorations, which promotes aerospace scientists to propose many conceivable fabrication methods. Herein, we fabricated architectural and functional structures with lunar regolith simulants via digital light processing (DLP) technology, followed by sintering. The printing slurry was prepared by mixing CLRS-2 lunar regolith simulant powders with photocurable resins, and it exhibits excellent print-ability. The microstructures, chemical compositions, particle size distribution and thermal-gravimetric characteristic of the simulants were analyzed, respectively. The average compressive strength and flexure strength of the sintered samples are 428.1?MPa and 129.5?MPa respectively, which are higher than those reported in previous researches. These improved mechanical properties could be due to the small average diameter of pores and the chemical compositions.