Multi-scale and Multi-material Additive Manufacturing

ABSTRACT

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been widely recognized as a disruptive manufacturing technology for various applications thanks to its capability of fabricating 3D objects with unprecedented geometric complexity and multiple functionalities. Also, AM enables revolutionary designs by using complex 3D shapes and heterogeneous materials. The structures with various material compositions and geometric feature sizes spanning from 10 μm up to 200 mm have a wide variety of interesting properties. However, the fabrication of such multi-scale and multi-material structures requires the integration of micro-, meso- and macro-scale manufacturing processes. How to develop AM processes to effectively and efficiently fabricate such structures with various engineering materials is still an open question.

In this seminar, I will discuss multi-scale and multi-material AM from the perspective of process and our methods to address the critical fabrication challenges. More specifically, this talk includes: (1) a novel in-situ-transfer vat photopolymerization process to fabricate microscale fluidic channels at 10 microns level; (2) a new hopping light vat photopolymerization approach to fabricate millions of microscale features over macroscale surface; (3) a vibration-assisted separation method for large area constrained-surface-based vat photopolymerization process; (4) a new type of automatic reusable supports for additive manufacturing; and (5) an innovative printhead design to enable the printing of highly viscous materials.