Adaptive and Smart Materials for Advanced Manufacturing Methods

The focus of this STTR program is the development and maturation of a novel, room-temperature process to fabricate multi-layer metal-polymer (including PVDF and other smart materials) composites in an additive approach. This overcomes the limitation arising from the large temperature difference between metal and polymer manufacturing processes, and presents a new technology for additive manufacturing of smart materials with embedded electronics, and metal-polymer composites with tunable mechanical properties. We are developing a transformational metal-polymer hybrid additive fabrication process in which the material and spatial composition of the metal and polymer constituent materials can be designed, executed, and characterized on a voxel-to-voxel basis. This approach is based on direct acoustic energy deposition (DAED) in the materials. In Phase I, we developed a prototype DAED set-up, conducted analytical modeling to guide and validate fabrication processes; and fabricated and tested multiple piezo-polymer/metal hybrid specimens; we have achieved TRL 3 for the basic technology. In this Phase II effort, we will mature the technology by detailed modeling of metal-metal and metal-polymer interfaces under DAED, developing a scaled, prototype commercially viable DAED-FDM machine to AM manufacture compliant, metal-polymer hybrid composite sensors and actuators. We expect to achieve TRL 6+ by the end of Phase II.