3D Lithography of Organo-Soluble Mold Materials for Sol-Gel Nanocompsites

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a suitable, manufacturing method for fabricating structures with high
geometric complexity and heavily undercut features, which cannot easily be fabricated with traditional manufacturing 1 In Scheme I the direct light processing (DLP) based machine Perfactory® (Envisiontec) is shown. For fabrication of 3D parts the CAD model is sliced up and every slice is projected into the bottom layer of the resin tank by a micro-mirror array. The light sensitive resin is cured in a few seconds and peeled off afterwards. The polymer adheres on the z-stage which is moved up 30 to 50 pm in z-direction. Then the next layer is cured. By this technique 3 dimensional parts made out of polymers can be built. Commercial RP resins lead to highly cross-linked polymers. If other materials are desired the polymers have to be used as mold materials. Unfortunately they can only be removed at higher temperatures by burning, which limit the range of casting materials. Recently, water-soluble photopolymers were 2 but mold processing cannot occur in the presence of water such as for water based ceramic slurries or sol-gel materials.