Leveraging Multi-Material Ceramic Additive Manufacturing and Intrinsic Material-Based Catalyst Metallization to Realize Robust and Damage-Free 3D Ceramic Electronics

Abstract

The fabrication of complex three-dimensional (3D) ceramic electronics is hindered by the lack of metallization methods that can achieve stable coating on curved surfaces and internal cavities without thermal damage. Here, a material-intrinsic catalytic design is implemented on a multi-material vat photopolymerization (MM-VPP) 3D printing platform, in which inert voxels without Pd²⁺ and active voxels containing Pd²⁺ are directly encoded into the monolithic ceramic structure during the printing stage. After co-sintering, the Pd²⁺ is in situ converted into surface Pd(0) nano-anchors, providing autocatalytic sites for subsequent electroless deposition, thereby achieving 3D selective metallization without energy writing. This method is applicable to a variety of systems such as Ni, Cu, and Ag, obtaining dense, continuous metal layers with robust interfaces and showing stable performance in standardized adhesion and electrical characterizations. Long-term thermal aging, damp heat exposure, ozone aging, thermal shock, and thermal cycling tests further confirm that the ceramic–metal interface maintains continuous structure and stable functionality under extended service conditions. Device-level verification shows that the ceramic antenna maintains stable communication at high temperature (short-term conditions), and the ceramic light emitting diode (LED) module exhibits stable conduction at low temperature. The combination of MM-VPP and intrinsic catalytic patterning provides a scalable platform for 3D selective metallization of ceramic architectures and offers compatibility to complement existing processes, particularly for complex ceramic geometries and non-line-of-sight regions.