Direct Ceramic Forming by Lithographic Additive Manufacturing

Soshu Kirihara

Abstract

Newly developed Ultraviolet laser lithography can directly form fine ceramic components with micro geometric patterns. As an additive manufacturing technique, two dimensional cross sections were created through dewaxing and sintering by UV laser drawing on spread resin paste including ceramic nanoparticles, and three dimensional composite models were sterically printed by layer laminations and interlayer joining. Nanoparticles of alumina, titania or calcium phosphate of 300 nm in average diameter were dispersed in to photo sensitive liquid resins at 50 % in volume fraction. The resin paste was spread on a glass substrate at 50 μm in layer thickness by a mechanically moved knife edge. An ultraviolet laser beam of 355 nm in wavelength was adjusted at 10 μm in diameter and scanned on the surface. Irradiation power was increased to 1.0 W for enough solidification depth. The half wavelength of the incident ultraviolet ray should be comparable with the nanoparticles gaps in the resin paste, and electromagnetic field can be resonated and concentrated through Anderson localization. After the layer lamination, the ceramic structures at 99 % in sintering density were successfully processed to create the alumina thermoacoustic stacks, the titania electromagnetic devices and the calcium phosphate biological implants.