Our colleague and FPI student Benito Román has won the Students Contest during the LII Annual Meeting of the Spanish Ceramics Society celebrated in Burgos last October 3rd. As the winner, Benito Roman will be the Spanish representative at the European Students Contest to be held in Limoges (France) next June during the European Ceramics Society Meeting.
Silicon carbide (SiC) components and micro-components are costly to machine and time consuming; therefore, the ability to pattern extremely complex 3D structures at the microscale opens an important, brand-new field for a wide variety of applications, such as filters, mini heat exchangers, etc. The winning work entitled “3D Complex Structures of Silicon Carbide by Robocasting” presents the development of geometrically complex 3D structures of SiC assembled by a colloidal printing method known as robocasting, a moldless, computer-controlled technique for the deposition of ceramic pastes, followed by a Spark Plasma sintering (SPS) process. This technique does not require molds, involving a ceramic slurry reservoir for extrusion. By using additives and an optimum formulation of the pastes, the fabrication of structures with density close to 97% was enabled by a spark plasma sintering process, without damage to the structures. In addition, the work showed the viability of these structures to act as supports for carbon nanotubes growth by CVD, which could present interesting applications in catalysis.