Ultrahigh strength printed ceramic lattices

Ceramic lattices with ultrahigh compressive specific strength, 39.7 N m/g, and specific stiffness, 1.435 N m/kg, have been fabricated by Stereo Lithography Apparatus (SLA)in this work, which are much stronger than stainless steel lattices, whose specific strength and stiffness are 2 N m/g and 0.03 N m/kg respectively. These achievements not only make the application of ceramic lattices no longer limited in novel functional material field, like tissue engineering or filtration, but are also a substantial breakthrough on light-weight design of structural ceramics. In this study, the design of lattice unit cell was optimized through experiments and simulation, and then ceramic lattices were reinforced by infiltrating SiC and heat treating. Ultimately, the strength of reinforced lattices reached nearly 7 times higher than that of the primary ones. Besides, compressive properties, fracture behaviors and microscopic features of ceramic lattices were systematically and thoroughly discussed in this paper.