One of the biggest challenges in microscale additive manufacturing is the production of three-dimensional,microscale metal parts with a high enough throughput to be relevant for commercial applications.This paper pres...One of the biggest challenges in microscale additive manufacturing is the production of three-dimensional,microscale metal parts with a high enough throughput to be relevant for commercial applications.This paper presents a new microscale additive manufacturing process called microscale selective laser sintering(μ-SLS)that can produce true 3D metal parts with sub-5μm resolution and a throughput of greater than 60mm^(3)/hour.Inμ-SLS,a layer of metal nanoparticle ink is first coated onto a substrate using a slot die coating system.The ink is then dried to produce a uniform nanoparticle layer.Next,the substrate is precisely positioned under an optical subsystem using a set of coarse and fine nanopositioning stages.In the optical subsystem,laser light that has been patterned using a digital micromirror array is used to heat and sinter the nanoparticles into the desired patterns.This set of steps is then repeated to build up each layer of the 3D part in theμ-SLS system.Overall,this new technology offers the potential to overcome many of the current limitations in microscale additive manufacturing of metals and become an important process in microelectronics packaging applications.展开更多
基金This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.1728313.
文摘One of the biggest challenges in microscale additive manufacturing is the production of three-dimensional,microscale metal parts with a high enough throughput to be relevant for commercial applications.This paper presents a new microscale additive manufacturing process called microscale selective laser sintering(μ-SLS)that can produce true 3D metal parts with sub-5μm resolution and a throughput of greater than 60mm^(3)/hour.Inμ-SLS,a layer of metal nanoparticle ink is first coated onto a substrate using a slot die coating system.The ink is then dried to produce a uniform nanoparticle layer.Next,the substrate is precisely positioned under an optical subsystem using a set of coarse and fine nanopositioning stages.In the optical subsystem,laser light that has been patterned using a digital micromirror array is used to heat and sinter the nanoparticles into the desired patterns.This set of steps is then repeated to build up each layer of the 3D part in theμ-SLS system.Overall,this new technology offers the potential to overcome many of the current limitations in microscale additive manufacturing of metals and become an important process in microelectronics packaging applications.
