Atomization of metal and alloy powders: Processes, parameters, and properties

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been intensively studied over this decade due to the increasing demand of functional and precise materials in various industries. AM process leverages on the concept of layer by layer deposition or joining of a material at micro‐ or nano‐scale to produce the final products. As such, AM technology is widely used to manufacture products of complex geometries with high precision in a short time. As the quality and the performance of AM manufactured functional products depend on the quality and the cost of the atomized metal or alloy powder used, the use of powders of high size uniformity, high purity, high sphericity, high flowability, low cost, and no trapped gas bubble porosity is necessary. To this end, various metal production technologies were investigated and one of the popular technologies is atomization. This article reviewed the working principles of the various atomization technologies for the production of fine metal and alloy powders. The key atomization conditions discussed in this article include atomization type, material feed rate and temperature, atomizing fluid flow rate, type and temperature, cooling rate, and atomization pressure. In addition, several outlooks on the prospect and the optimization of atomization technologies were also discussed in this article.

Microplasma-printed Au-based SERS sensing platform for ultra-sensitive chemical analyte detection

“…18 However, batch processing along with the difficulty in engineering the SERS platforms considerably limits the application of the technique. Further advancements can be achieved by integrating microplasma processing with 3D printing to provide flexible control over the nanoparticle deposition area with high precision, 19 thus allowing the reproducible fabrication of uniform AgNP and AuNP SERS platforms. On top of that, such a strategy has a high degree of flexibility in process control, where process parameters like the type of reagent, plasma discharge power, deposition time, and motion path can be adjusted digitally and in real time.…”