Metal–Organic Decomposition for Additive Manufacturing of Extreme Environment Electronics

The lack of intrinsic resistance to oxidation and corrosion, particularly in high-temperature environments, significantly limits the performance and longevity of materials used in extreme conditions like aerospace and energy applications. A key challenge is developing single-step additive manufacturing capable of producing metals and ceramics with built-in resistance to these degradative processes. Herein, we report a metal-organic decomposition strategy to additively manufacture hybrid electronic materials that remain stable at 1100 °C for over 37 h and more than 80 h in strong acid and base solutions, demonstrating oxidation and corrosion resistance. The gold materials, derived from partial in-solution reduction and thermal decomposition of the precursor, exhibit a high conductivity of 10.8 MS/m at 1000 °C, while the molecular decomposed alumina shows a phase transformation from the γ-phase to the stable α-phase below 1000 °C. Synchrotron-based in situ wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) was employed to analyze its crystal structure and high-temperature stability mechanistically. These findings suggest that the combination of molecular decomposed gold and alumina in a top-down structure (metal-ceramic) from molecular decomposition possesses great potential for extreme environment electronics with thermal stability and reliability, allowing wireless temperature detection in harsh environments from room temperature to 1000 °C.