3D printing process of high performance ceramics

The present talk will address the recent efforts on the production of 3D printed ceramics parts using a binder jetting as well as vat photo-polymerization technology to produce components with applications in a wide range of industrial fields. Silica parts have been here printed using binder jetting to produce interpenetrated phase composites when reacted with molten aluminum. These customized composites have applications in the automotive and defense sector by creating parts such as brake rotors or ballistic structures. Plain printed silica parts have also been used as mold template to be infiltrated with polymer resins to produce composite tooling structures. The optimization of the printing parameters plays a critical role to provide dense and high performance components. Similarly, printed alumina or zirconia using vat-photo-polymerization (either via SLA or DLP) can result in substrates with interesting applications in the filed of microelectronics. Here, printed ceramic substrates can be used to encapsulate printed metallic connections that can be used for high temperature thermocouples, antennas, dielectric components, and power electronics among several other components. Current efforts have concentrated on including, a wide range of inks and pastes such as molybdenum, tungsten, and copper to yield these microelectronic structures. The optimization of the post-thermal treatment is a critical step to yield robust mechanical printed parts. The results of this research work will presented in the IMAT 2022 annual meeting.