Liquid Metal Additive Manufacture

The traditional metal additive manufacturing technology mostly uses printing materials such as high melting point metal powder and wire and laser melting printing method, which have a high cost and are not easy-to-perform hybrid printing processes with nonmetals. Therefore, it is necessary to develop additive manufacturing technology based on low melting point metals or liquid metals. Liquid metal is a kind of functional material that has been paid more and more attention in recent years. It has been applied in the fields of heat dissipation, energy, and electronics to a certain extent. Combining additive manufacturing with liquid metal will have the advantages of easy composite printing and diverse printing methods. This paper analyzes the characteristics of liquid metal materials and their properties such as oxidation, wetting, and conductivity, describes the preparation methods of high-performance liquid metal printing inks, and summarizes various printing technologies such as desktop 3D printing, mask deposition technology, biological in vivo 3D printing technology, metal droplet stacking forming technology, linear direct writing technology, atomization inkjet printing technology, and suspension 3D printing technology for functional electronic circuits. In the future, in order to realize the popularization and application of liquid metal additive manufacturing technology, in addition to expanding the variety of liquid metal materials and continuing to develop new low melting point metals with various characteristics, these additive manufacturing technologies will also be deeply integrated with the Internet, thus bringing about subversive development to the traditional production and manufacturing mode.