Additive manufacturing of 3D nano-architected metals

Andrey Vyatskikh, Stéphane Delalande, Akira Kudo, Xuan Zhang, Carlos M. Portela and Julia R. Greer ()
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Andrey Vyatskikh: California Institute of Technology
Stéphane Delalande: PSA Group, Centre Technique de Vélizy 2
Akira Kudo: California Institute of Technology
Xuan Zhang: Tsinghua University
Carlos M. Portela: California Institute of Technology
Julia R. Greer: California Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Most existing methods for additive manufacturing (AM) of metals are inherently limited to ~20–50 μm resolution, which makes them untenable for generating complex 3D-printed metallic structures with smaller features. We developed a lithography-based process to create complex 3D nano-architected metals with ~100 nm resolution. We first synthesize hybrid organic–inorganic materials that contain Ni clusters to produce a metal-rich photoresist, then use two-photon lithography to sculpt 3D polymer scaffolds, and pyrolyze them to volatilize the organics, which produces a >90 wt% Ni-containing architecture. We demonstrate nanolattices with octet geometries, 2 μm unit cells and 300–400-nm diameter beams made of 20-nm grained nanocrystalline, nanoporous Ni. Nanomechanical experiments reveal their specific strength to be 2.1–7.2 MPa g−1 cm3, which is comparable to lattice architectures fabricated using existing metal AM processes. This work demonstrates an efficient pathway to 3D-print micro-architected and nano-architected metals with sub-micron resolution.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03071-9

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