Metals by Micro‐Scale Additive Manufacturing: Comparison of Microstructure and Mechanical Properties
Abstract
Many emerging applications in microscale engineering rely on the fabrication of 3D architectures in inorganic materials. Small‐scale additive manufacturing (AM) aspires to provide flexible and facile access to these geometries. Yet, the synthesis of device‐grade inorganic materials is still a key challenge toward the implementation of AM in microfabrication. Here, a comprehensive overview of the microstructural and mechanical properties of metals fabricated by most state‐of‐the‐art AM methods that offer a spatial resolution ≤10 μm is presented. Standardized sets of samples are studied by cross‐sectional electron microscopy, nanoindentation, and microcompression. It is shown that current microscale AM techniques synthesize metals with a wide range of microstructures and elastic and plastic properties, including materials of dense and crystalline microstructure with excellent mechanical properties that compare well to those of thin‐film nanocrystalline materials. The large variation in materials' performance can be related to the individual microstructure, which in turn is coupled to the various physico‐chemical principles exploited by the different printing methods. The study provides practical guidelines for users of small‐scale additive methods and establishes a baseline for the future optimization of the properties of printed metallic objects—a significant step toward the potential establishment of AM techniques in microfabrication.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- May 25, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1002/adfm.201910491
Entities
People
- Alain Reiser
- Alberto Piqué
- Cathelijn van Nisselroy
- Dimos Poulikakos
- Futoshi Iwata
- Ivo Utke
- Jeffrey M. Wheeler
- Kathleen A. Dunn
- Kristin Charipar
- Lukas Koch
- Nanjia Zhou
- Ofer Fogel
- Patrik Rohner
- Ralph Spolenak
- Sanghyeon Lee
- Seung Kwon Seol
- Tomaso Zambelli
- Toshiki Matsuura
- Zvi Kotler
Organizations
- ETH Zurich
- Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute
- Korea University of Science and Technology
- National Research Council of Science and Technology
- Office of Naval Research
- SUNY Polytechnic Institute
- Shizuoka University
- Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
- United States Naval Research Laboratory
- University of Hong Kong
- Westlake University