Rapid fabrication of transparent silica glass components using photocurable suspension: shaping finer structures from coarse model
IIJIMA M. 1, NISHIYAMA K. 1, YAMANOI Y. 1, TATAMI J. 1
1 Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan
Fabrication of glass and ceramic components having complexed fine structures through stereolithographic based processes have attracted many researchers in recent years due to its on-demand shaping ability. However, typical processes using photocurable suspensions suffer from extremely long and complicated heating for drying, dewaxing, and sintering of printed bodies. This is to avoid structural collapse by inhomogeneous shrinking and gas generation due to thermal decomposition of highly loaded binders. Recently, we have reported a new series of photocurable suspensions, in which reagent particles adsorbed with polyamine-based dispersants were dispersed into organic solvents with reduced amounts of monomer contents. In this system, when UV light is irradiated, an exothermic polymerization of MA followed by a heat induced Michael addition, which is a reaction between polymerized MA and amine groups on the particles, occurs. This results in successful photocuring of the suspension using low monomer contents by the formation of interparticle crosslinks, which realizes successful rapid drying/debinding/sintering of printed bodies without occurring any structural collapse. Here, inspiring that the reagent particles are directly crosslinked in this system, we intended to design a photocured body with low particle density which can possess large and homogeneous shrinkage during drying and sintering to achieve finer structures from coarse models. The key point was to use nanoparticles as reagents, which the particle volume content can be geometrically reduced while maintaining the small average interparticle distances to enable photo-cross-linking. Briefly, interparticle photo-cross-linkable suspensions comprising 5 vol% silica nanoparticles (c.a. 12 nm) were designed. The flow curves and the viscoelastic measurements of the suspension before and after UV irradiation showed that all designed suspension were in highly dispersed state and photocurable under UV light irradiation. Due to the successful formation of interparticle polymer networks, which were confirmed by FESEM observation, the photocured bodies were processable through rapid drying/dewaxing/sintering without having structural collapse even for those prepared from 5 vol% nanoparticle suspensions. Further, owing to the low particle volume fractions, we demonstrate that a transparent silica glass components can be rapidly prepared with large liner shrinkage, up to c.a. 60%, from the photocured bodies, which was favorable to achieve finer structures from coarse models.