3D printing of glass by additive manufacturing techniques: a review

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM), which is also known as three-dimensional (3D) printing, uses computer-aided design to build objects layer by layer. Here, we focus on the recent progress in the development of techniques for 3D printing of glass, an important optoelectronic material, including fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering/melting, stereolithography (SLA) and direct ink writing. We compare these 3D printing methods and analyze their benefits and problems for the manufacturing of functional glass objects. In addition, we discuss the technological principles of 3D glass printing and applications of 3D printed glass objects. This review is finalized by a summary of the current achievements and perspectives for the future development of the 3D glass printing technique.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

three-dimensional (3D) printing / glass / fused deposition modeling (FDM) / selective laser sintering/melting (SLS/SLM) / stereolithography (SLA) / digital light processing (DLP) / direct ink write (DIW) / optical devices / microfluidic

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFB1107200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51772270), the Open Project Program of Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (No. 2018-WNLOKF005), and State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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