Conventional 3D metal printings are generally time-consuming as well as lacking of high performance printable inks. From an alternative way, here we proposed the method of liquid phase 3D printing for quickly making conductive metal objects. Through introducing metal alloys whose melting point is slightly above room temperature as printing inks, several representative structures spanning from one, two and three dimension to more complex patterns were demonstrated to be quickly fabricated. Compared with the air-cooling in a conventional 3D printing, the liquid-phase-manufacturing offers a much higher cooling rate and thus significantly improves the speed in fabricating the target metal objects. This unique strategy also efficiently prevents the liquid metal inks from air oxidation, which is hard to avoid otherwise in an ordinary 3D printing. The key physical factors (such as properties of the cooling fluid, air pressure within the syringe barrel and needle diameter, types and properties of the printing ink) and several interesting intermediate fluids interaction phenomena between liquid metal and conventional cooling fluids such as water or ethanol, which evidently affecting the printing quality, were disclosed. In addition, a basic route to make future liquid phase 3D printer incorporated with both syringe pump and needle arrays was also suggested. The liquid phase 3D printing, which owns potential values not available in a conventional method, opens an efficient way for quickly making conductive metal objects in the coming time.

Science China Technological Sciences, 2014