Abstract
Among engineering materials, ceramics are indispensable in energy applications such as batteries, capacitors, solar cells, smart glass, fuel cells and electrolyzers, nuclear power plants, thermoelectrics, thermoionics, carbon capture and storage, control of harmful emission from combustion engines, piezoelectrics, turbines and heat exchangers, among others. Advances in additive manufacturing (AM) offer new opportunities to fabricate these devices in geometries unachievable previously and may provide higher efficiencies and performance, all at lower costs. This article reviews the state of the art in ceramic materials for various energy applications. The focus of the review is on material selections, processing, and opportunities for AM technologies in energy related ceramic materials manufacturing. The aim of the article is to provide a roadmap for stakeholders such as industry, academia and funding agencies on research and development in additive manufacturing of ceramic materials toward more efficient, cost-effective, and reliable energy systems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3049-3088 |
| Number of pages | 40 |
| Journal | Journal of the European Ceramic Society |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2022 |
Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the United States (US) Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Advanced Manufacturing, Office of Vehicle Technology, Office of Nuclear Energy through the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) program, and Office of Fusion Energy Sciences through the Fusion Materials Science program under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle LCC. In addition, this work is supported by the United States National Science Foundation, grant # 2152732 and the United States Air Force of Scientific Research grant # FA9550-20-1-0280 (PI, Majid Minary-Jolandan). Material contributed by S.L. is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CMMI-1943104. EI acknowledges funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Heisenberg program. LW acknowledges funding from the Carl Zeiss Foundation (Durchbrueche 2019). Jeffery J. Haslam acknowledges his contributions were prepared by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. Ceramics are a unique class of materials that possess many structural and functional properties needed for energy applications. In energy applications where metals and polymers cannot be used, ceramics typically are called upon to provide improved properties including thermal stability, wear and corrosion resistance, strength, and electrical conductivity, among others. Ceramics are typically difficult to process, but many AM techniques are under development to improve manufacturing and reduce the associated cost. In addition, AM helps to control the local material microstructure and macro-architecture, which leads to improved properties for many energy applications where the engineering design requirements are aggressive and stringent. However, leaps of progress have already been seen and tested in many energy applications utilizing ceramics. Coincidentally, many ceramics engineering applications in energy require very similar materials, processing, and properties; so, there are many opportunities for the energy sector to grow and leverage AM of ceramics among the various applications presented in this review. Additionally, some applications require functional and structural properties, so there is some overlap among the various applications and materials, and more engineering and processing to consider. In general, it is a recommended to select material for the properties and decide on the best manufacturing technique to achieve said properties, whether it is traditional techniques or AM. Cost and sustainability are areas to keep in mind while selecting the materials and manufacturing routes (i.e. does the manufacturing save time and cost and will it make the application more effective or efficient?). For ceramics, AM is not as popular or widely used as for metals and polymers, so it is important to understand all the literature that is already present and continue to build from it. It is also prudent to consider hybridization of different AM technologies as well as new techniques to process the ceramics materials of the future for energy applications. Ultimately, AM of ceramics has a great opportunity to improve energy applications. We note that each AM technique has its own unique advantages, disadvantages, and characteristics, in terms for instance of the type of ceramic materials that can be processed successfully with it, the minimum and maximum feature size achievable, the size of the printing envelope, the surface quality of the parts, the cost of the equipment and the cost of the overall printing-to-sintered part process. Although many materials can be processed with different AM technologies, when we consider the making of parts, we should be careful in selecting the AM technique(s) that can afford the characteristics required for the specific application for which the part is been manufactured. This material is based upon work supported by the United States (US) Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Advanced Manufacturing, Office of Nuclear Energy through the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) program, and Office of Fusion Energy Sciences through the Fusion Materials Science program under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle LCC. In addition, this work is supported by the United States National Science Foundation , grant # 2152732 and the United States Air Force of Scientific Research grant # FA9550-20-1-0280 (PI, Majid Minary-Jolandan). Material contributed by S.L. is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CMMI-1943104 . EI acknowledges funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Heisenberg program. LW acknowledges funding from the Carl Zeiss Foundation (Durchbrueche 2019). Jeffery J. Haslam acknowledges his contributions were prepared by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 .
Keywords
- Additive manufacturing (AM)
- Advanced manufacturing
- Ceramics
- Energy and environment
- Materials selection
- Processing
