Application
- Digital Light Processing (DLP) printing is a type of 3D printing technology that uses a digital projector to cure photopolymer resins layer by layer. Conventional DLP printing finds applications in rapid prototyping, customized manufacturing, dental and medical fields, jewelry and fashion, and microfluidics.
- However, particle-based inks, typically used in DLP printing, introduce limitations such as particle settling and aggregation, viscosity constraints, light scattering, limited particle loading, particle size limitations, post-processing challenges, and difficulties in multi-material printing.
- Therefore, novel methods of 3D printing using particle-free printing compositions are required to enable the creation of high-resolution, complex ceramic structures with precise control over their shape and properties.
Our Innovation
We developed a 3D-printing method that utilizes photopolymerizable sol-gel technology with soluble metal salts precursors, resulting in the fabrication of objects with controlled porosity and transparency.
Advantages
- Use of particle-free compositions based on sol-gel processes with metal salt precursors to fabricate ceramics, to overcome the limitations of particle-based inks.
- Significant advancement in ceramic manufacturing, since the materials and method enable the fabrication of complex and high-resolution ceramic structures with simple doping.
- This technology has potential applications in various fields such as aerospace, biomedical engineering, and electronic devices.
- Significant reduction of production times and costs.
- Improved properties of the resulting ceramic structures such as increased strength, toughness, and thermal stability.
Opportunity
Our technology has multiple potential applications, such as high-precision ceramic parts for the aerospace and defense industry, advanced ceramic implants for orthopedic and dental applications, and high-performance ceramic components for electronic devices such as sensors and actuators.
Moreover, this technology can also be used to create customized ceramic products such as ceramic artworks and sculptures.
