Novel Additive Manufacturing Materials for Waste Heat Deduction

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies of polymers have experienced tremendous growth within the last decade. [1,2] Various application methods such as material extrusion (MEX), vat photo-polymerization (VPP), material jetting, binder jetting, or powder bed fusion techniques have been elaborated and refined as well as the corresponding feedstocks such as filaments, resins, powders, and compounds with metallic or ceramic powders. [3] Being used mainly for rapid prototyping approaches, in the beginning, AM technologies have grown to be a considerable alternative in production, especially when parameters such as freedom of design, resource efficiency, or mass customization are an issue. [4,5] One major research topic is additive manufacturing for medical applications, where personalized products can be produced via AM. [6][7][8][9] The limitation here are not the technologies but the materials, which have to fulfil all the medical requirements. Other topics are the use of the technologies in production lines, especially in aeronautic, space, and automobile industries. However, AM still has to overcome certain obstacles including inline assembly capability to make a step toward a fully accepted production alternative to well-established production processes. [10] Printing parts and components and subsequently mounting them on the final product do not make use of the full AM potential while printing these parts directly onto the substrate might generate additional benefits due to cutting manual assembly costs. Pushing AM toward inline assembly capability will even enhance the overall system performance of a product, for example, when electrical or thermal conductivity due to interface issues can be improved. [11] The EcoPrint project consortium has set its focus on developing AM inline applicable, electrically insulating, thermally