Preliminary Study of Printing Optical-Based Materials using Aerosol Jet Deposition Process

This work examines the printing of optical-based materials using aerosol jet printing (AJP), an additive manufacturing process. Deposition of optical-based materials using the AJP process has potential to be applied in the fabrication of embedded fiber optic Bragg grating sensors. Made from silica (SiO2), fiber optic Bragg grating sensors are small, lightweight, and chemically inert, making them suitable for a variety of applications. This study examines the preparation and deposition of a newly developed silica-based printing ink. The results of the printing method, the impact of various printing and processing parameters on the deposition quality and microstructure, light reflectivity, scanning electron microscope (SEM) images, and content analyses of the deposited layers are presented. The results show uniform printed layers and demonstrate the capability of the AJP method as well as the newly developed silicabased ink to print high-quality commercial optical-based materials. The focus of this study is on the process/ optical material property interaction only; the printing of actual functional sensors on components and testing them will be discussed in later studies and is beyond the scope of this paper.