Shanghai Silicate Institute has made new progress in the research of 3D printing silicon carbide ceramics
Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramics have become an urgent problem to be overcome in 3D printing ceramics due to their easy oxidation, difficult melting, and high light absorption. At present, most 3D printing SiC ceramic methods have low solid content, high silicon content, and mechanical properties. Lower, generally adopt chemical vapor deposition CVI (Chemical Vapor Infiltration) or precursor impregnation pyrolysis PIP (Precursor Infiltration Pyrolysis) and other post-processing processes to increase the solid content of the material to achieve the improvement of the comprehensive performance of the ceramic material, which is bound to reduce the 3D printing SiC ceramic process. the superiority.
Schematic diagram of 3D printing of SiC ceramics
Recently, associate researcher Chen Jian of the research team of Huang Zhengren from Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed for the first time a new method of high temperature fused deposition combined with reaction sintering to prepare SiC ceramics. The method adopts high-temperature in-situ interface modification powder and slow-release of low-temperature stress to prepare a high-plasticity printing body, and obtains a high-plasticity printing body with low melting point and high boiling point, and the solid content of the material exceeds 60vol%; After printing, the equivalent carbon density of the printed ceramic sample can be precisely adjusted to 0.80 g·cm-3 after degreasing. At the same time, the topology optimization design of the ceramic printing path can form tree-shaped multi-level pores in the sample; the final ceramic sample does not require CVI or After PIP treatment, direct reaction silicon infiltration and sintering can achieve high-efficiency infiltration of low residual silicon/carbon and material densification. The amount is 346.35±22.80 GPa, and the mechanical properties of the ceramics are close to those of the reaction-sintered SiC ceramics prepared by the traditional method. Relevant research results were published in Additive Manufacturing (doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2022.102994), and 2 Chinese invention patents were applied for. At the same time, the plastomer printing method avoids the potential harm of powder printing under microgravity conditions, which is a future space 3D printing offers the possibility.
SiC ceramics of different shapes and sizes
The co-first authors of the paper are master student Li Fanfan and doctoral student Ma Ningning of Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, and the corresponding authors are associate researcher Chen Jian and researcher Huang Zhengren. Relevant research has been funded and supported by the National Key R&D Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation.
Machined ~200mm 3D printed SiC ceramic
