Peter Dr. Regenfuß

Laser micro sintering of SiO2 with an NIR-laser

Many materials have already been investigated for laser micro sintering. Nearly all technical metals can be processed with this rapid prototyping technology. A new field of investigation is the sintering of ceramics. For industrial and also for medical, especially dental, application silicon dioxide is a multiply applicable material. One of its interesting features is that the properties of the resulting material can be varied between ceramic on the one and vitreous on the other side, depending on the extent of crystalline or amorphous character of the nano-scale structure. A special problem with laser micro sintering of ceramics is the poor absorption of Nd:YAG laser radiation by most of the materials. Besides that, laser micro sintering of ceramics, in contrary to the process with metals, is not merely a series of aggregational transitions. A solution for the micro part generation of SiO2 is reported. Typical laser sintering results from this material are presented. Material specific behaviors during laser micro sintering are discussed.