Multi-Metal Additive Manufacturing with Submicron Resolution by Electrohydrodynamic Redox 3D Printing

Abstract

The ability to design metals with control over the 3D chemistry at a submicron level unlocks unique possibilities for tailoring and programming their properties. Small scale additive manufacturing of metals has recently shown promising results towards the direct synthesis of chemically heterogeneous 3D geometries. However, the fast and reliable deposition of a wide range of device-grade materials as well as the ability the change the chemistry on-the-fly still pose challenges to the field.Here, we will show how electrohydrodynamic redox (EHD-RP) 3D printing can serve as a toolbox to manufacture multi-metal structures [1]. This technique is based on the dissolution, transfer and re-deposition of metals in solvents using electrochemistry. The on-demand generation of metal ions enables the local modification of the chemical composition in a voxel-by-voxel fashion. The confined electroplating process on the substrates allows feature sizes down to 120 nm, while providing an as-deposited dense microstructure. We’ll focus first on the challenges involved in depositing a large range of metals with EHD-RP [2]. Second, we’ll show how the deposition of metals using different solvents can be combined to manufacture multi-metal structures with a high chemical resolution.[1] A. Reiser, M. Linden, P. Rohner, A. Marchand, H. Galinski, A. S. Sologubenko, J. M. Wheeler, R. Zenobi, D. Poulikakos, and R. Spolenak. Multi-metal electrohydrodynamic redox 3D printing at the submicron scale. Nat. Commun., 10(1):1-8, 2019.[2] M. Nydegger, A. Pruška, H. Galinski, R. Zenobi, A. Reiser and R. Spolenak. Additive Manufacturing of Zn with Submicron Resolution and its Conversion into Zn/ZnO core-shell structures. Nanoscale, 2022