Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, July 9 (Xinhua) Glass is a material that is difficult to make with 3D printing technology, especially at the micron level. But a team of scientists at the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology solved the problem by developing a new method of 3D printing silica glass, or amorphous silicate, simplifying a complex and energy-consuming process. As a proof of concept, they printed the world's smallest wine glass (made of actual glass) in 3D, with a thinner rim than human hair. it also prints out an optical resonator for optical fiber communication systems-one of the potential applications for 3D printing silica glass components.

"the backbone of the Internet is optical fiber made of glass." Kristinn Gylfason of the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology, co-author of the study, said: "in these systems, a variety of filters and couplers are needed, which can now be printed in 3D using our technology, which opens up many new possibilities."

Silica glass (amorphous silica) has excellent thermal stability, chemical stability, hardness and light transparency, but the current 3D printing methods can not reproduce these properties well, especially on the micro scale. These methods require the use of different organic mixtures and sintering steps for a long time at high temperature in order to remove organic residues and obtain the desired properties. This extra step greatly limits potential applications because only substrate materials that can withstand high temperatures can be used. Some methods also require assembling the 3D printed structure into the final form, which is also difficult on a micron scale.

When developing the alternative method, Gylfason et al chose hydrogenated siloxane (HSQ) as the raw material, which is similar to silica and can be patterned by electron beam, ion beam and certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light. One of the main advantages of this method is that it does not rely on organic compounds as photoinitiators or binders, but on direct cross-linking of inorganic HSQ.

According to CTOnews.com, there are three main steps in this process. First, they dissolve HSQ in an organic solvent and drip it on the substrate. After the HSQ dries, they use a focused subpicosecond laser beam to track the desired 3D shape. Finally, the HSQ that is not exposed to light is dissolved with potassium hydroxide solution. The Raman spectrum analysis of the microstructure printed in 3D shows all the expected characteristics of silica glass. However, there are also some traces of hydrogen and carbon. For applications that require purer silica glass, residual organic matter can be removed by annealing the structure at 900 degrees Celsius. After this treatment, the spectrum of the structure matches that of the commercial fused silica glass substrate.

Although the microstructure printed by annealing 3D may cause them to shrink or deform, the authors found that the maximum shrinkage of their silica glass structure is about 6%. The shrinkage of glass objects made by stereolithography and direct ink writing is between 16% and 56%. In addition to the miniature wine glass and optical resonator used as a proof of concept, the author printed a miniature KTH logo, a cantilever and a tapered spiral, and a silica glass fiber tip. They believe that their method can be used to make custom lenses for medical devices and micro-robots. By coating nano-diamond or ferromagnetic nanoparticles on the 3D-printed microstructure, the properties of the structure can be further adjusted for hybrid quantum photonics integration or magnetic removal motion control, respectively.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.