Fabrication Of Metallic Structure Using Micro-stereolithography

3D printing process formerly referred to as rapid prototyping(RP)is an additive manufacturing process as opposed to the subtractive manufacturing of conventional methods.Unlike for conventional manufacturing that begins from a block of material removing the unwanted material mechanically until the part wanted is formed,3D printing takes a bottom-up process to create 3D tangible parts from scratch building it layer-by-layer.This technology could be employed in a wide range of engineering application,including,materials for energy storage devices,lowdensity high-strength composite material,however,limited material selection of some techniques limit their application.Therefore,there's a need for more research on 3D printing in order to ascertain ways in which performance of energy storage devices can be improved.Basically,3D printing process begins with a digital model in a computer either designed using computer aided design(CAD)or by scanning a real physical object.The digital model is sliced to generate numerous cross-sectional layers of finite thickness then send to a 3D printer which will combine them layer-upon-layer sequentially until a physical part is formed.Great research in this field has yielded a significant number of additive manufacturing techniques which include and not limited to,fused deposition modelling(FDM),selective laser sintering(SLS),stereolithography(SLA).Stereolithography for example fabricates object by using UV laser to selectively cure photosensitive polymer resin layer-by-layer using cross-sectional pictures of the model obtained from slicing software.In this thesis,the process of micro-stereolithography is studied with an aim of finding an avenue to design and fabricate an intricate metallic structure bearing pores at micro-scale.Since micro-stereolithography which is dependent on photopolymerization process to cure polymer resin is unable to directly fabricate metallic structures therefore,other methods such as metallization was studied to find out how to obtain a uniform coat of nickel along the surfaces of all contours of the structure.Operation parameters of electroless nickel plating process were also studied with an aim of obtaining optimum conditions for uniform adhesive nickel coat that can subsequently be transformed further to a suitable electrode material for supercapacitor.Last but crucial part of this research forming a possible application of the metallic structures formed was a study on the energy storage devices with a specific focus on supercapacitors.This was aimed at finding out the best way the structures formed could be used to mitigate the shortcomings of EDLCs and pseudocapacitive electrode materials of supercapacitor in a bid to increase its energy density.The outcome of both processes was subjected to tests to ascertain if the objective was achieved.