The efficient stabilisation of ceramics based nanopowders is a prerequisite for the achievement of highly reliable ceramic materials and for the development of three-dimensional printing technologies, recently known as Additive Manufacturing. This applies to all kind of AM, like stereolithography and DLP, fused deposition modelling FDM, selective laser sintering/melting SLM/SLS and other AM technologies.
Agglomeration due to Van der Waals forces can be avoided via electrostatic and/or steric stabilization using different formulation strategies to increase the (repulsive) barrier for agglomeration. We recently performed studies to stabilize alumina, magnesium-spinel and zirconia submicron/nanoparticles. Anion and cation type comb copolymers were applied as a promising dispersants in case of titania stabilisation [1,2]. Highly charged counterions were furthermore used to modify the electric-steric double layer [8] of mixed oxides. These slurries were successfully applied to the stereolithographic shaping of ceramics using a digital light processing (DMD-DLP) [3-8]. The concepts can be applied for shaping of translucent spinel [8], for the printing of complex shaped biomaterials [paper submitted],  for FDM based shaping technologies [9] and for the powder based direct shaping via SLS/SLM [10].Our recent results related to surfactant selection in Additive Manufacturing of ceramics will be presented, highlighting the need for advanced and appropriate powder treatment.

References
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