Manufacturing cellular materials via Three-Dimensional Printing of spray-dried metal oxide ceramic powder

Cellular materials, metallic bodies with gaseous voids, are a promising class of materials that offer high strength accompanied by a relatively low mass. Unfortunately, existing manufacturing techniques constrain a designer to a predetermined part mesostructure, material type, and macrostructure. In this paper, the authors document their design rationale for the selection of the Three-Dimensional Printing (3DP) additive manufacturing process as a means to fabricate metallic cellular materials. This is achieved by selectively printing a solvent into a bed of spray-dried metal oxide ceramic powder. The resulting green part undergoes reduction and sintering post-production processes in order to chemically convert it to metal.