Weinan Xu1
University of Akron1
Selective laser sintering (SLS) (also named powder bed fusion) has been regarded as the most promising polymer 3D printing technology for many industrial applications. Its unique advantages compared with extrusion- or photopolymerization-based technologies include the ability to fabricate complex geometries without support structures, highly isotropic properties of the printed parts, and batch production of multiple parts in one printing. However, the major limitation of SLS is the limited polymer powder selection (95% is based on polyamide) and difficulty in multi-material printing. Here, I will present our recent progress in the development of new types of polymer/composite microparticles for SLS, and more importantly, the simultaneous laser-induced graphitization of polyimide microparticles into 3D hierarchical graphene structures with precisely controlled geometry and internal structure. 3D graphene-metal oxide structures can also be fabricated by this strategy, which have superior electrochemical properties for energy storage and catalysis applications.