Effects of Fabrication Parameters on the Properties of Parts Manufactured with Selective Laser Sintering: Application on Cement-Filled PA12

Selective laser sintering (SLS) becomes a promising technology for manufacturing complicated objects with small to moderate numbers from a wide range of polymeric and metallic powders. However, the fabrication parameters in the SLS process need to be tailored for each end-use fabricated product. Hence, it becomes extremely important to investigate the effects of fabrication parameters on the mechanical and morphological properties of SLS parts. For this purpose, the present experimental work is devoted to evaluating the effects of some important fabrication parameters, that have not received proper attention in the published literature, on the properties of cement-filled polyamide 12 (PA12) parts manufactured with the SLS technique. The effect of scanning vector length on the tensile, compressive, and flexural strength of manufactured PA12/white cement parts is investigated. Also, the end-of-vector (EOV) effect on the edge geometry of manufactured parts is studied. Moreover, the effect of incident laser power (LP) on the surface quality of fabricated SLS PA12/white cement parts is qualitatively evaluated. The results from this work revealed that the scanning vector length significantly affects the mechanical properties of SLS parts provided that the load is applied along the scanning vector direction. Also, it is noticed that excessive exposure to laser energy at layer edges can deteriorate the part’s edge and in some cases can cause localized heating and burning of the part’s edge and, eventually, can result in surface microcracks. Finally, the experiments confirmed that increasing the laser power can enhance the surface roughness of manufactured parts; however, excessive increase in laser power causes localized burning and initiation of surface microcracks

Induced growth of dendrite gold nanostructure by controlling self-assembly aggregation dynamics

Self-assembly of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is an important growth mode for fabricating functional materials. In this work we report a dendrite structure formed by slowing down the aggregation dynamics of AuNPs self-assembly. The obtained results show that the aggregation dynamics is dominated by the Reaction Limited Aggregation Model (RLA) more than the Diffusion Limited Aggregation Model (DLA). In which the repulsion due to electrostatic forces is dominant by the Van Der Walls attraction forces, and low sticking probability of nanoparticles. The aggregation dynamics of AuNPs can be slowed down if the water evaporation of the drop casted colloidal AuNPs on a quartz substrate is slowed. Slowing down the evaporation allows electrostatic repulsion forces to decrease gradually. At certain point, the attraction forces become higher than the electrostatic repulsion and hence cluster aggregation take place slowly. The slow aggregation dynamics allows the nanoparticles to sample all possible orientation in the sticking site, searching for the lowest energy configuration. The size distribution of the nanoparticles in liquid is confirmed using dynamic light scattering based on Stokes\u2013Einstein equation for diffusion coefficient in water. X-ray and photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the sample after aggregation showed a shift which is related to the aggregation compared with non-aggregated colloidal nanoparticles in the solution. The study shows that dendrite self similar structure can be formed by slowing down the aggregation dynamics of nanoparticles as a result of minimizing the Helmholtz free surface energy of the system

Nanocomposite scaffold fabrication by incorporating gold nanoparticles into biodegradable polymer matrix: Synthesis, characterization, and photothermal effect

Nanoparticle incorporation into scaffold materials is a valuable route to deliver various therapeutic agents, such as drug molecules or large biomolecules, proteins (e.g. DNA or RNA) into their targets. In particular, gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) with their low inherent toxicity, tunable stability and high surface area provide unique attributes facilitating new delivery strategies. A biodegradable, photocurable polymer resin, polypropylene fumarate (PPF) along with Au NPs were utilized to synthesize a hybrid nanocomposite resin, directly exploitable in stereolithography (SL) processes. To increase the particles' colloidal stability, the Au NP nanofillers were coated with polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP). The resulting resin was used to fabricate a new type of composite scaffold via mask projection excimer laser stereolithography. The thermal properties of the nanocomposite scaffolds were found to be sensitive to the concentration of NPs. The mechanical properties were augmented by the NPs up to 0.16 \u3bcM, though further increase in the concentration led to a gradual decrease. Au NP incorporation rendered the biopolymer scaffolds photosensitive, i.e. the presence of Au NPs enhanced the optical absorption of the scaffolds as well, leading to possible localized temperature rise when irradiated with 532 nm laser, known as the photothermal effect

Fractal analysis of inter-particle interaction forces in gold nanoparticles aggregates

Self-assembly of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can be used for several applications including sensors, lab on chips, and surface enhanced Raman scattering sensitive substrates. The architecture of the AuNPs aggregates is driven by the nanoparticle size, surface charge, and dielectric constant, and by the surface functionality of the substrate, which determine the mutual interaction forces among the AuNPs. These forces were indirectly investigated by means of fractal analysis of the resulting patterns of aggregates. We drop-cast AuNPs dispersions with five different values of concentration onto glass substrates, which resulted in self-assembled thin films with different aggregation density. We imaged the AuNPs aggregates with scanning electron microscope and studied their topological properties. We observed an increase in the fractal dimension of the aggregates with the AuNPs concentration, reaching a fractal dimension value of 1.56 +/- 0.01 for the low-density samples and 1.88 +/- 0.01 for the high-density samples. Concurrently, the photoluminescence peak showed only a weak red-shift with increasing concentration, while the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed higher binding energy than in the bulk gold, due to the different structural arrangement of the AuNPs. Thus, a correlation was established between the fractal dimension and the inter-particle interaction forces that control the aggregation