Photosensitive Al 2 O 3 slurry with high solid content and low viscosity

Slurries with high solid content and low viscosity are highly necessary to lower the sintering shrinkage and avoid possible defects for ceramic components fabricated by vat photopolymerization technique. However, the viscosity of slurry dramatically arises with the increase of solid content, which severely affects the printing process and the quality of preformance. To solve this issue, a novel combined strategy of powder surface modification and selection of dispersant was proposed to significantly increase the solid load without too much increase in viscosity. The surface of Al 2 O 3 particles was modified by Silane A174 to improve its wettability with resins, and then the use of KOS 110 formed steric hindrance between particles achieving good dispersion. The synergistic effect of the modifier and dispersant was realized. Al 2 O 3 slurry with a high solid loading up to 65 vol% and low viscosity of 20.0 Pa·s at 30 s −1 was prepared for stereolithography-based DLP 3D printing, which had among the highest performance in photosensitive Al 2 O 3 slurries.