(378d) Additive Manufacturing of Micro-Architected Metals Via Hydrogel Infusion

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a uniquely powerful tool to produce complex and high-performance parts with applications from the aerospace to biomedical fields. Most existing metal AM techniques use heat to define part shape via melting or sintering of metal powders. In contrast, we report an AM technique, coined hydrogel infusion additive manufacturing (HIAM), that produces metals and alloys with microscale resolution via vat photopolymerization¹. To fabricate micro-architected metal structures, we infuse 3D printed hydrogels with aqueous metal precursors, then calcine and reduce the infused hydrogel scaffolds to create miniaturized metal replicas. Unlike existing vat photopolymerization strategies, which incorporate target materials or precursors into the photoresin during printing, HIAM does not require re-optimization of resins and curing parameters for different materials, enabling quick iteration, compositional tuning, and the ability to fabricate multimaterials. This talk will elucidate relationships between processing, microstructure, and mechanical properties of HIAM metals, and highlight the wide-ranging versatility of achievable materials and microstructures, which include copper, nickel, silver, cobalt, cupronickel alloys, high entropy alloys, tungsten, and metal multi-materials.

(1) Saccone, M. A.; Gallivan, R. A.; Narita, K.; Yee, D. W.; Greer, J. R. Additive Manufacturing of Micro-Architected Metals via Hydrogel Infusion. Nature 2022, 612, 685–690. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05433-2.