Stereolithography 3D Printing from Suspensions Containing Titanium Dioxide

Abstract

In view of the wide use of titanium dioxide, more and more approaches to 3D printing of materials based on it have recently been developed, the most promising if which remains stereolithography 3D printing owing to high resolution and low power consumption. It was studied how the degree of crystallinity of titanium dioxide affects both the properties of the obtained suspensions for stereolithography 3D printing, and the sinterability of the printed bulk materials. It was shown that the use of amorphous titanium dioxide as a precursor increases the fraction of the inorganic phase in the suspension, which leads to a significantly smaller shrinkage in sintering. Despite the high critical energy of polymerization and the low photosensitivity of the produced suspensions, the use of amorphous titanium dioxide enabled one to completely remove the polymer binder by high-temperature annealing without significant deformation of the printed samples.