Fabrication of Porous Ceramic Parts via a Digital Light Processing-based 3D Printing Method

Abstract

In this study, a digital light processing (DLP)-based 3D printing method was developed to fabricate porous ceramics. This work includes the preparation of slurry, 3D printing process, and thermal treatment process. Specifically, the UV-curable ceramic suspension containing ceramic particles and pore forming agents was optimized by varying the size difference between ceramic particles and pore forming agents. Then, the process parameters of DLP 3D printing was optimized to improve the dimensional precision and printing quality. Lastly, the thermal treatment process for DLP 3D printed ceramic green body was optimized by tuning the heating conditions during debinding step. Through these optimization processes, porous ceramics with pores of a few micron size were successfully fabricated. This our method is expected to contribute to improvements of vat photopolymerization 3D printing methods for fabricating porous piezoelectric ceramic composites with precise control of pore properties. Furthermore, it is believed that the strategy will be applied to other types of ceramics as well. Therefore, it can pave the way for a variety of new application fields where porous ceramic composites could not be applied due to a lack of the proper manufacturing methods.