Ceramic bodies without warping using epoxide–acrylate hybrid ceramic slurry for photopolymerization‐based 3D printing

Abstract

AbstractTo be able to produce ceramic bodies with complex shapes without interlayer delamination and warping through vat photopolymerization‐based 3D printing techniques, photosensitive ceramic slurries should be studied to prepare 3D printed green and sintered bodies. In this study, we developed dual curable acrylate–epoxide ceramic slurries for digital light processing (DLP) 3D ceramic printing. The dual curing process of the slurries is a combination of photo‐radical polymerization of acrylate and thermal cationic polymerization of cyclo‐aliphatic epoxide. The green bodies prepared by dual curing of the slurries showed higher fracture strength and better adhesion between layers and between starting particles and binder polymer in comparison to acrylate‐based green body. These advantages were due to higher crosslinking density of the binder matrix and hydrogen bonding by hydroxyl groups from epoxide ring opening. The green and sintered bodies printed with improved slurry and DLP 3D printer had flat shape without warping unlike those from acrylate‐based bodies. Moreover, the distribution of inter‐particle necking in the sintered body was uniform and the interface boundary between layers was not observed. This is because of excellent uniformity of the dual cured acrylate–epoxide polymer matrix (uniform crosslinking density in layers) in the green body and hydroxyl groups generated by epoxy ring opening.