3D printing is a rapidly advancing field, that is sometimes referred to as the ‘new cornerstone of the manufacturing industry’. However, at present, 3D printing is mostly limited to plastics. If metals could be used for 3D printing as well, this would open a wide new range of possibilities.
Metals conduct electricity and heat very well, and they’re very robust. Therefore, 3D printing in metals would allow manufacturing of entirely new devices and components, such as small cooling elements or connections between stacked chips in smartphones.
However, metals melt at a high temperature. This makes controlled deposition of metal droplets highly challenging. Thermally robust nozzles are required to process liquid metals, but these are hardly available. For small structures in particular (from 100 nanometres to 10 micrometres) no good solutions for this problem existed yet.
Researchers from FOM and the University of Twente now made a major step towards high-resolution metal printing. They used laser light to melt copper and gold into micrometre-sized droplets and deposited these in a controlled manner. In this method, a pulsed laser is focused on a thin metal film. that locally melts and deforms into a flying drop. The researchers then carefully position this drop onto a substrate. By repeating the process, a 3D structure is made. For example, the researchers stacked thousands of drops to form micro-pillars with a height of 2 millimetres and a diameter of 5 micrometres. They also printed vertical electrodes in a cavity, as well as lines of copper. In effect, virtually any shape can be printed by smartly choosing the location of the drop impact.
Read more: 3D PRINTING WITH METALS ACHIEVED BY UT-RESEARCHERS
The Latest on: 3D metal printing
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The Latest on: 3D metal printing
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