UV Additive Manufacturing of Polymer Derived Ceramics

Zak Eckel, HRL Labs, LLC

Abstract: UV additive manufacturing of polymer derived ceramics enables materials and structures not feasible via conventional ceramic processing. We report novel fabrication methods for lightweight, three-dimensional polymer structures initially formed from UV curable pre-ceramic monomers. Upon pyrolysis, these polymer structures form a fully dense high temperature ceramic with uniform shrinkage. Ceramics with high strength and extreme thermal stability produced by this additive process are of interest for thermal protection systems, biomedical devices and lightweight sandwich structures.