Molten pool behaviors and printability of tungsten anti-scattering grids with extremely thin wall thickness fabricated via laser powder bed fusion

It is challenging for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technique to fabricate metal parts with a wall thickness below 100 μm. This work investigated the critical conditions for achieving extremely thin wall thickness in tungsten grids fabricated via LPBF. Specifically, the impact of low energy density on the printability of tungsten single tracks and grids via LPBF was comprehensively examined. A computational fluid dynamics approach was employed to develop a thermal fluid flow model for single tracks with multilayers in LPBF. The findings demonstrate that at low energy densities, single tracks exhibit four different morphologies, i.e., balling, discontinuity and winding, discontinuity but straightness, as well as continuity and straightness. The simulation model effectively elucidates the continuity of single tracks and provides insights into the governing mechanism of molten pool defects. Due to high thermal diffusion properties of tungsten, the continuity of its track relies on the connection of neighboring molten pools and is sensitive to scanning speed. The tungsten molten pools with low energy density can be categorized into shallow flows affected by surface morphology and deep flows influenced by internal voids of the powder bed. After multi-layer stacking, the track fluctuations and defects in single tracks accumulated into greater surface roughness and deteriorate thin-walled morphology. The critical conditions required for printing extremely thin walls were achieved, ensuring minimal merging of tracks between two layers by maintaining the energy density of 57 J/mm³. Based on these findings, an ultra-thin-walled anti-scattering tungsten grid with a wall thickness of 86 μm and a wall roughness below 3.3 μm (Ra) was fabricated by LPBF. This work provides valuable theoretical insights and presents a viable methodology for determining the minimum energy density threshold and wall thickness essential for LPBF processing of thin-walled components.