Additive manufacturing of textured barium titanate ceramics via shear force-induced platelet alignment

This study explores the potential of single crystal barium titanate (BTO) platelets to fabricate nontoxic ceramics with enhanced material properties through texturization of grain structure. The proposed methodology relies on direct ink write additive manufacturing to enable grain-oriented growth of BTO ceramics by utilizing a combination of spherical and platelet-shaped particles. The use of platelet-shaped particles in the ceramic ink guides particle alignment parallel to the build plate due to shear forces at the nozzle during the printing process. While platelet contents ranging from 0 to 40 wt.% showed a decrease in density as the content increased, experimental data revealed an incremental trend between platelet content, dielectric properties, and the degree of alignment of the particles on the F200 crystal plane, achieving a maximum texturized orientation of 65%. Such orientation resulted in 29.55% improved dielectric properties compared with randomly oriented BTO ceramic. The findings of this research validate the effectiveness of additive manufacturing technologies to tailor the microstructural characteristics of ceramics for specific functional applications.