Optimal dispersant concentration of PZT ceramic-containing slurry to enhance printing and surface quality of DLP 3D printed ceramics

Abstract

The primary goal of this work is to suggest an optimal dispersant concentration for high-precision PZT objects with a high surface quality via a digital light processing (DLP) technology. Here, the ceramic slurry formulations consist of PZT ceramics (80 wt%), photoinitiator (1 wt%), dispersant (1-3 wt%), and monomer (18-16 wt%). The influences of dispersant concentrations on the rheological properties and the dispersion stability of ceramic slurry as well as the photo-polymerization properties and the surface quality of the DLP printed ceramic objects were characterized. The ceramic slurry formulations consist of PZT ceramics (80 wt%), photoinitiator (1 wt%), dispersant (1-3 wt%), and monomer (18-16 wt%). Interestingly, the lowest viscosity and the highest dispersion stability as well as the highest printing precision and the highest surface quality of DLP printed ceramic object were achieved by the optimal dispersant concentration of 2 wt%. This work proposed the correlation of dispersant concentration with photo-polymerization properties of the ceramic slurry, which serves as foundation for the fabrication of PZT objective with high precision and high surface quality via DLP technology.