“Expanding our platform into the technical ceramics market is a natural evolution for Fortify,” says Joshua Martin, CEO and co-founder of Fortify. “Pushing the limits with these materials requires processing highly loaded, abrasive, and viscous materials. These are the same capabilities that drive our success in various technical photopolymers.”
The increasing number of ceramics available for 3D printing will undoubtedly open the door for ceramic additive manufacturing to penetrate high-performance applications in demanding sectors such as aerospace, medicine, and energy. This leads us to ask which ceramic materials are currently being 3D printed and what forms they take.
Types of ceramics that are 3D printed
One of the first ceramic materials to be 3D printed was clay. Numerous manufacturers of clay extrusion printers, such as Delta, WASP, and CERAMBOT, have entered the ceramic 3D printing market over the years, primarily focusing on the art, architecture, and design sectors. A prominent 3D printing design studio, San Francisco-based Emerging Objects, is renowned for printing clay and porcelain to create innovative sculptures and buildings. That said, ceramic additive manufacturing has largely moved away from white products like clay and porcelain and toward technical ceramics. Technical ceramics offer the opportunity to use 3D printing to produce high-performance parts for high-revenue industries such as aerospace and defense, the chemical industry, and dentistry.
Oxide ceramics: The main type of ceramic being printed is oxide ceramics, such as alumina and zirconia. These binary oxides are typically cheaper and easier to process than many non-oxidized ceramics, which contributes to their increasing popularity in 3D printing. Outside of 3D printing, alumina is commonly used in implants and medical devices, while zirconia is increasing its penetration in the dental industry, as it is used for implants and dental veneers. Both dentistry and medicine are target sectors for the 3D printing industry as a whole, as they present opportunities for mass customization for which 3D printing is designed. Given these facts, it is no surprise that alumina and zirconia are among the most popular ceramic 3D printing materials today. Almost all major manufacturers of ceramic 3D printers, such as Lithoz, Admatec, and 3D Ceram, develop and sell zirconia and alumina for ceramic 3D printing.
Oxide-free ceramics: Oxide-free ceramics, such as silicon carbide and aluminum nitride, are less common on the market than oxide ceramics. This can be attributed to two main factors: the increased cost and the greater difficulty of printing oxide-free ceramics. That said, oxide-free ceramics are becoming increasingly available commercially within the ceramic additive manufacturing market, as they are particularly useful in extreme environments given their high resistance to heat and corrosion. Recently, a growing number of companies have debuted their own oxide-free ceramics for 3D printing. This includes not only 3D printing ceramic manufacturers such as Lithoz, Admatec, and 3D Ceram, but also ceramic material suppliers such as SGL Carbon and Schunk Carbon Technology. Ceramic material suppliers do not typically produce 3D printable ceramics for direct purchase, but rather offer these materials as part of their in-house parts production services.
Bioceramics: Bioceramics generally refers to ceramics used in the body that stimulate cellular activity. Bioceramics have been the subject of extensive academic research in the last decade because they offer the opportunity to create implantable devices that are not only non-toxic but also actively help the body repair itself. The possibility of 3D printing bioceramic implants is of great interest to many in the field of medical devices and academic research because 3D printing facilitates the creation of customized implants to fit each patient's body. The two most explored bioceramics within 3D ceramic printing are hydroxyapatite (HA) and tricalcium phosphate (TCP); these bioceramics are popular not only for the properties of their materials but also for their prevalence in medicine, as numerous HA and TCP implants and devices (not 3D printed) have been previously approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Once the most common ceramic materials found in the 3D printing market have been identified, in what raw material forms can these ceramics be found? Generally, there are six main types of raw material for ceramics, four of which include polymers as intermediate binders and two of which do not:
Photopolymer resins: where ceramic powder is incorporated into resins to make a paste for printing;
Thermoplastic filaments: where ceramic powder is mixed with thermoplastic to make a filament for extrusion;
Thermoplastic pellets: where ceramic powder is mixed with thermoplastic to make pellets for extrusion;
Ceramic paste: where a viscous ceramic paste, such as clay or porcelain, is made for printing;
Ceramic powder: micrometer-sized ceramic powder particles are used for powder bed printing;
Nanoparticle suspensions: where ceramic nanoparticles are suspended in water for nanoparticle jetting, a type of material jetting.
Moving forward: 3D ceramic printing materials
In general, the materials available for ceramic additive manufacturing are diverse, but they are ripe for further innovation and expansion. Making higher-performance ceramics and ceramic matrix composites available for 3D printing will expand the capacity of ceramic additive manufacturing to become the most widely used manufacturing technique for low-volume part production. IDTechEx predicts that the next 10 years will see continued innovation from a materials perspective, as more material suppliers and new ceramic 3D printing companies enter the market with their own offerings.
For a more detailed breakdown of 3D ceramic printing technology and other information on this sector, including player profiles, market forecasts, application case studies, and benchmark studies, see "3D Printing Ceramics 2022-2032: Technology and Market Outlook".
