Preparation of polyamide 6 and its titanium dioxide photocatalytic composite powders for laser powder bed fusion

¹ State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die and Mould Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

² School of Logistics Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

MSAM 2022, 1(3), 14 https://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i3.14

Accepted: 9 August 2022 | Published: 24 August 2022

© 2022 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

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Abstract

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing is an effective method to prepare three-dimensional ordered network titanium dioxide (TiO₂) photocatalytic materials, therefore enhancing the absorption intensity of incident light and improving the photocatalytic efficiency. However, TiO₂ is difficult to be directly sintered by LPBF due to the high melting point and brittleness. In this study, we prepared a polyamide 6 (PA6)-coated TiO₂ photocatalytic composite powder for LPBF based on the dissolution precipitation polymer coating (DPPC) method and evaluated its LPBF processability. In the precipitation process of PA6, there was a significant crystallization exotherm with temperature recovery. Effective temperature control of this precipitation process had a significant effect on the morphology and particle size distribution of the precipitated powder. The increase of the dissolved concentration of PA6 to 150 g/L produced an obvious temperature gradient of the reactor, resulting in a wide particle size distribution and a powder with a characteristic porous surface. The prepared PA6/TiO₂ composite powder presents a near-spherical porous-surfaced morphology, a high specific surface area of 240.5 m²/kg, an appropriate Dv(50) of 48.8 μm, and a wide sintering window of 26.6°C, indicating a good LPBF processability and potential of the photocatalytic application.

Keywords

Additive manufacturing

Laser powder bed fusion

Photocatalytic material

Polyamide 6

Titanium dioxide

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