Additive manufacturing of cellular ceramic structures: From structure to structure–function integration

Abstract

Cellular ceramic structures (CCSs) have promising application perspectives in various fields. Recently, additive manufacturing (AM), usually known as three-dimensional printing (3D printing), has been increasingly adopted to produce CCSs. Usually, the structural properties of additively manufactured cellular ceramic structures (AM-CCSs), i.e., lightweight characteristics, load-bearing capacity, toughness, unconventional properties, are traditionally investigated. Interestingly, AM technologies have a significant advantage in achieving the structure–function integration for CCSs. Functional properties, e.g., electromagnetic property, acoustic property, thermal property, of CCSs can be achieved during the structural design synchronously. In this review, firstly, the AM technologies for CCSs are comparatively introduced. Then, structural AM-CCSs are summarized. After that, structure–function integrated AM-CCSs are further introduced in detail. Finally, challenges and opportunities towards structure–function integrated AM-CCSs are forecasted. This review is believed to give some guidance for the research and development of CCSs.

Keywords

• Cellular ceramic structures
• Additive manufacturing
• Structure
• Structure-function integration