Researchers have opened up a new area for ceramic 3D printing: biocompatible mechanics.
The researchers sought an answer to the problem of the brittleness of ceramics, particularly with 3D-printed ceramics.
Ceramic materials are highly desirable because they offer several interesting properties:
- Rigidity
- Impervious to most chemicals
- Non-magnetic
- High temperature resistance
- Mostly biocompatible
Because of that last point, they have been used in many bio applications. However, there is one area they have had challenges entering: applications where mechanical stress is involved.
For example, consider a prosthetic made from ceramic. It might function just fine initially, but then if exposed to sufficient mechanical forces, the ceramic prosthetic might crack into many sharp pieces. This makes ceramics often incompatible with that type of application.
Their approach was to coat the ceramic material with a biocompatible silicone resin, which would reduce the possibility of catastrophic failure and provide a “graceful failure” scenario.
But it wasn’t as simple as just dipping ceramic parts in resin. The researchers also sought to fundamentally change how brittle materials behave under stress, especially in applications requiring lightweight and energy-dissipating designs.
They did so by designing complex origami patterns like Miura-ori to provide mechanical metamaterial properties—features that emerge from shape and structure, not just material. These include:
- Multi-directional energy absorption
- Strain accommodation through folding/unfolding
- Controlled failure modes (compartmental collapse vs. catastrophic fracture)
A flat or solid ceramic part, even when coated, can’t exhibit these dynamic behaviours.
In other words, they designed highly resilient 3D-printed ceramic structures and protected them with silicone coatings.
This is essentially a new class of material.
This method could potentially unlock the use of ceramics in additive manufacturing applications previously dominated by metals or polymers due to ceramics’ brittleness. There are many possible applications in biomedical, aerospace, and defence industries. Features such as smart joints, foldable casing, morphing surfaces, etc., could all provide valuable new functions in mechanical systems.
As a new material, however, we would have to have parallel development of design software that could properly generate 3D models in this fashion that take advantage of the new features.
If this catches on, we could see an increase in use of SLA systems, which would be highly appropriate to print this type of ceramic object. The few manufacturers of ceramic-dedicated 3D printers would also get a boost.
I’m very interested to see how this technology moves forward.
Via Springer
