································································································································································································································Abstract The powder injection molding process having advantages in manufacturing three-dimensional precision parts essentially requires a debinding process before sintering to remove the binders used for preparing feedstock. In this study, powder injection molding of translucent alumina was performed, and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is used as a supercritical fluid that makes it possible to remove a large amount of binder, which is paraffin wax. The relationship between the optical property of translucent alumina and the debinding condition (temperature and pressure) of supercritical CO 2 was investigated. As temperature and pressure increased, extraction rate of the binder showed rising tendency and average grain size after sintering process was relatively fine. On the other hand, optical transmittance was reduced. As a result, the debinding condition at 50 o C and 20 MPa that represents the lowest extraction rate, 8.19 × 10 −3 m 2 /sec, corresponds to the largest grain size of 14.7 µm and the highest optical transmittance of 45.2%.

주제어 : 초임계이산화탄소, 세라믹 사출 성형, 가변조건 탈지공정, 초임계추출Abstract : The purpose of this study is to remove paraffin wax binder effectively from powder injection molded part using supercritical fluids in powder injection molding process. For a thin powder injection molded part about 1-2 mm thickness, paraffin wax binder can be removed rapidly without any defect by traditional supercritical extraction process which has fixed high temperature and pressure condition. But, for a thick powder injection molded part, there are limitations in removing paraffin wax binder by the fixed high process condition because crack occurs at the beginning step. Therefore, here we studied variable condition debinding process that starts with mild process condition at the beginning step and then increase the process conditions simultaneously at each step. To find out the initial process condition that has the highest extraction yield without any defect for each sample thickness, we investigated various supercritical debinding conditions using 1-4 mm thickness ceramic injection molded sample. By using the variable condition debinding process that starts with the initial process condition at the first step and then increasing process conditions simultaneously at each step (temperature from 333.15 to 343.15 K, pressure from 12 to 27 MPa, and CO2 flow rate from 1.5 to 10 L/min), over 95% of paraffin wax binder was removed from the 4 mm thick (10 mm diameter) ceramic injection molded disk samples within 5 hours.