Low-Temperature Additive Manufacturing of Silica Glass Composites

Additive manufacturing has revolutionized the ability to prototype and manufacture complex structures. A shortcoming of many additive manufacturing processes is the reliance on organic materials that are not durable long-term, in many cases being both chemically and thermally unstable. Conversely, additive manufacturing approaches that feature more-robust inorganic materials require expensive and high-temperature (>1000 °C) processing steps, which often limits their final use to one single function. Here, we describe a materials platform that enables the additive manufacturing of inorganic glass composite structures at low temperatures (<250 °C), with chemical and thermal stability comparable to traditional silicon dioxide-based materials. Due to the low temperature processing, a wide range of materials (dielectrics, metals, optical) can be embedded into the glass to create multifunctional glass structures. Since no specialized tooling is needed and the source materials are commercially available, we expect this approach to be easily adopted for prototyping glass/ceramic objects and structures.