The breadth of materials for additive manufacturing (AM) continues to be a nascent primary preventative obstacle for the permutations of application of the processes. That breadth continues to grow year on year, with increases in applicable material properties among that range, and decreases in production cost relative to advances in hardware production methodologies. Some materials are confined to specific modulations of AM technologies via technological hardware restrictions, others are limited by propitiatory dynamics whereby internal R&D and external research collaborations are yet to be, will not be, or cannot be, established. There has been a growth in the use of advanced materials in AM, which has been a key variable in the proportional increase of production application of AM for end-use products.
Market and media have particularly spurred the continual and constant research of new materials with new properties by an increasing number of corporate, educational and institutional bodies. Material properties are confined by suitability of individual materials to individual additive manufacturing modulations. Approaching alloys and compounds with a lateral vision has enabled a number of recent advances. A new research paper studies the potentiality of quasicrystalline structures, in particular of aluminium base, as an aggrandisement of metal manufacturing by additive means.
The study, which appears in IOP Science, is entitled ‘complex metal alloys as new materials for additive manufacturing,’ by Samuel Kenzari, David Bonina, Jean Marie Dubois and Vincent Fournée, provides an analysis of the use of complex metal alloys (CMA’s) for the production of lightweight parts composed of composites: either metal–matrix or polymer–matrix. The useful properties of CMA’s include: low friction, corrosion resistance, and wear resistance. Adversity they are intrinsically brittle. The team of researchers at the University of Lorraine in France have overcome this brittleness problem by using CMAs as a particle reinforcement or as a coating material.
The researchers write that quasicrystals, a type of complex metal alloy with crystal-like properties, can be useful in the design of new composite materials. The study provides a focus upon quasicrystalline structures as a means to accomplish augmented material properties. Crystals occur naturally in but a limited range of tessellating forms. Quasicrystals are grown with complex facet structures outside of those naturally existing possibilities. These advanced crystalline structures can fill all available space as they are ordered but not periodic. Quasicrystals appear most predominantly in aluminium alloys such as Al-Li-Cu, Al-Mn-Si, Al-Ni-Co, Al-Pd-Mn, Al-Cu-Fe, and so forth. A number of other compositions are also known such as Cd-Yb, Ti-Zr-Ni, Zn-Mg-Ho and Zn-Mg-Sc. [1]
Prof. Fournee Vincent, co-author, explains: “Automotive and aeronautics industries are happy to have functional parts with a lower density. Reducing the weight of vehicles reduces fuel consumption.” The team are currently researching health applications of the new metal–matrix and polymer–matrix composites. End-use parts using both types of composites are being commercialised.
[1] MacIá, Enrique (2006). “The role of aperiodic order in science and technology.” Reports on Progress in Physics 69 (2) via Wikipedia.