New Composite Materials for Additive Manufacturing - ECOPRINT

Project summary

Efficiency and reliability of power-electronics strongly depends on temperature. Growing demands on miniaturization of electronic components while ensuring efficient cooling and keeping production costs low, raises a need for new materials and technologies. The ECOPRINT project addresses this need by developing new metal-polymer and hybrid metal-organic composites suitable for Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. The main development steps are functionalization of metallic and ceramic filler particles by Atmospheric Pressure Plasma or wet chemical processes, compounding functionalized particles with high-strength polymer matrices, optimization of filaments, modification of 3D printing machines and investigation of new material concept for high temperature stability. The ultimate goal of the project is to use the newly developed materials in an AM process to design low-cost, highly thermal-efficient heat-sinks or cooling pipes of complex shape or on-demand cooling solutions.