Concurrent Formation of Metallic Glass During Laser Forward Transfer 3D Printing

In recent years, bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have drawn much research attention and are shown to be of industrial interest due to their superior mechanical properties and resistance to corrosion. In spite of the interest in harnessing MG for microelectromechanical systems devices, there are limitations in manufacturing such micrometer-scale structures. A novel approach for the fabrication of 3D MG structures using laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is demonstrated. Inherent tremendous cooling rates associated with the metal LIFT process (approximate to 10(10) k s(-1)) make the formation of a variety of BMGs accessible, including also various binary compositions. In this work, it is demonstrated that LIFT printing of ZrPd-based metallic glass microstructures can also be performed under ambient conditions. X-ray diffraction analysis of the printed structures reveals > 95% of amorphous metal phase. Taking advantage of the properties of BMG, high quality printing of high aspect ratio BMG pillars, and microbridges are demonstrated. It is also shown how a composite, amorphous-crystalline metal structure with a required configuration can be fabricated using multimaterial LIFT printing. The inherent high resolution of the method combined with the noncontact and multimaterial printing capacity makes LIFT a valuable additive manufacturing technique to produce metallic glass-based devices.