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July 4, 2013Advanced Materials924 citations

3D Printing of Free Standing Liquid Metal Microstructures

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CLCollin LaddJSJu‐Hee SoJMJohn F. Muth

Key Points

  • Develop a direct-write manufacturing technique to fabricate stable, free-standing 3D liquid metal microcomponents at room temperature.
  • Applied direct-write dispensing of liquid metal at ambient room temperature to generate 3D microscale shapes.
  • Exploited the rapidly forming native surface oxide layer to provide structural support against fluid surface tension and gravity.
  • Formed mechanically stable, self-supporting liquid metal architectures capable of overcoming high surface tension without collapsing.
  • Fabricated diverse functional microscale geometries, including vertical wires, sphere arrays, arched bridges, and electrical interconnects.

Abstract

This paper describes a method to direct-write 3D liquid metal microcomponents at room temperature. The thin oxide layer on the surface of the metal allows the formation of mechanically stable structures strong enough to stand against gravity and the large surface tension of the liquid. The method is capable of printing wires, arrays of spheres, arches, and interconnects.

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Cite This Study

Ladd et al. (2013) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69d8b53e183921ebcaae374bhttps://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201301400
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