Electroless Deposition of Palladium on Macroscopic 3D-Printed Polymers with Dense Microlattice Architectures for Development of Multifunctional Composite Materials

A simple procedure has been developed to create palladium (Pd) films on the surface of several common polymers used in commercial fused deposition modeling (FDM) and stereolithography (SLA) based three-dimensional (3D) printing by an electroless deposition process. The procedure can be performed at room temperature, with equipment less expensive than many 3D printers, and occurs rapidly enough to achieve full coverage of the film within a few minutes. 3D substrates composed of dense logpile or cubic lattices with part sizes in the mm to cm range, and feature sizes as small as 150 mu m were designed and printed using commercially available 3D printers. The deposition procedure was successfully adapted to show full coverage in the lattice substrates. The ability to design, print, and metallize highly ordered three-dimensional microscale structures could accelerate development of a range of optimized chemical and mechanical engineering systems. (c) 2017 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.