Influence of drying conditions on the stress and weight development of capillary suspensions

Cracking of suspensions during drying is a common problem. While additives, for example, binders and surfactants, can mitigate this problem, some applications, such as printing conductive pastes or sintering green bodies, do not lend themselves to the use of additives. Capillary suspensions provide an alternative formulation without additives. In this work, we use simultaneous stress and weight measurements to investigate the influence of formulation and drying conditions. Capillary suspensions dry more homogeneously and with lower peak stresses, leading to an increased robustness against cracking compared. An increase in dry film porosity is not the key driver for the stress reduction. Instead, the capillary bridges, which create strong particle networks, resist the stress. Increasing the relative humidity enhances this effect, even for pure suspensions. While lower boiling point secondary liquids, for example, water, persist for very long times during drying, higher boiling point liquids offer further potential to tune the drying process.