Lithography-Based Ceramic Manufacturing: A Novel Technique for Additive Manufacturing of High-Performance Ceramics

Abstract

Albeit widely established in plastic and metal industry, additive manufacturing technologies are still a rare sight in the field of ceramic manufacturing. This is mainly due to the requirements for high performance ceramic parts, which no additive manufacturing process was able to meet to date.The Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM)-technology which enables the production of dense and precise ceramic parts by using a photocurable ceramic suspension that is hardened via a photolithographic process. This new technology not only provides very high accuracy, it also reaches high densities for the sintered parts. In the case of alumina a relative density of over 99.4 % and a 4-point-bending strength of almost 430 MPa were realized. Thus, the achievable properties are similar to conventional manufacturing methods, making the LCM-technology an interesting complement for the ceramic industry.