Abstract
Three-dimensional printing-based additive manufacturing has emerged as a new frontier in materials science, with applications in the production of functionalized polymeric-based hybrid composites for various applications. In this work, a novel conceptual design was conceived in which an AC electric field was integrated into a commercial 3D printer (-based fused filament fabrication (FFF) working principle) to in situ manufacture hybrid composites having aligned ceramic filler particles. For this work, the thermoplastic poly lactic acid (PLA) was used as a polymer matrix while 10 vol% KNLN (K0.485Na0.485Li0.03NbO3) ceramic particles were chosen as a filler material. The degree of alignment of the ceramic powders depended upon print speed, printing temperature and distance between electrodes. At 210 °C and a 1 kV/mm applied electric field, printed samples showed nearly complete alignment of ceramic particles in the PLA matrix. This research shows that incorporating electric field sources into 3D printing processes would result in in situ ceramic particle alignment while preserving the other benefits of 3D printing.
Highlights
Published: 17 November 2021With the global crisis surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing has emerged as a favorable manufacturing technique owing to its flexibility, portability, on-demand character, low cost, and use of a minimal workforce [1–3]
The materials extrusion technique for 3D printing, which is commonly referred to as fused filament fabrication (FFF), is commonly used to print hybrid polymer–ceramic particulate composites [6,7]
Since the filament was being extruded vertically, particle alignment due to gravitational force might have taken place; no form of alignment was observed in the composite filament either in vertical or horizontal cross section which demonstrates that gravity has a minimum influence on the filament extrusion process when using ceramic particles with particle size in the range of a few microns
Summary
With the global crisis surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing has emerged as a favorable manufacturing technique owing to its flexibility, portability, on-demand character, low cost, and use of a minimal workforce [1–. Hybrid composite filament-processing, which uses a solvent-free manufacturing process, remains a research gap to be explored in order to minimize the environmental footprint of dying the solvents, reduce the processing time cost, and improve the properties of the printed composites. There have been several reports in which piezoelectric composites have been manufactured using 3D printing, to the best of our knowledge, in situ alignment of ceramic particles during 3D printing of hybrid composites using an electric field has never been reported. In this work, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time, a conceptual design on how to use an alternating electric field to simultaneously 3D print a polylactic acid-K0.485Na0.485La0.03NbO3 (KNLN) composite with aligned KNLN particle using a solvent-free 3D printing process will be presented
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