Additive Manufacturing of Thin Wick Structures using Microsecond Pulse Laser

Various applications in thermal management, filtration, electrodes, lightweight structures, and bio-medical systems for space technologies requires thin wick structure. However, it is very challenging to fabricate such complex wick structures using current manufacturing technologies like furnace sintering, chemical vapor deposition or similar methods, 3D printing, etc. These processes have inherent disadvantages that limit the functionality of the produced wick structures. In this study, a new manufacturing process toward fabricating porous microscale wick structure using a pulsed microsecond CO2 laser was examined. Toward this purpose, particle-interface sintering of copper particles with an average particle size of 200 µm was performed. The preliminary results show the successful fabrication of a sintered multi-layer wick structure with controlled porosity. The pulse period, pulse width, scan speed, spot size, focal length, and the inherent energy density were carefully controlled for each material based on a design-of-experiments methodology. In addition, metallographic and characterization studies were performed to ascertain the desired wick structural coherency and performance efficiency. Furthermore, these results are compared with that of the simulated result using FLOW-3D® which provided similar results. The obtained results provide a crucial step toward developing a new class of manufacturing process for the advanced wick structures.