Processing Technique for Ceramic- based Energy Conversion and Storage Devices

Technical Summary:

The additive manufacturing based micro extrusion, modified micro extrusion by doctor blade smoothing, spray coating, and inkjet printing allow the manufacturing of thin layers with thickness from 5- 2000 μm. The versatile geometries of tubes, cylinders, rings, lobed-tube, cones, thin films, half cells, single cells, and multilayer stacks, etc. have been successfully printed. Combined with laser cutting, more precise complex shapes can also be fabricated. The laser processing can make the fully dense membrane, highly porous membrane from cost-effective raw materials of carbonates and oxides, etc. The proper sintering additives are the critical factor for achieving crack-free large-area parts by rapid laser reactive sintering. The laser cutting of the green layers was developed, which allows one to build up microchannel with a width of less than 50 μm. The laser process also allows the manufacturing of half-cell (porous electrode supported with dense electrolyte) and single cells (two porous electrodes with dense electrolyte in between).