CAREER: Additive Manufacturing with Acoustically Assembled Multi-Scale Composite Materials

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant focuses on understanding and advancing a new processing pathway for the additive manufacturing of the next-generation functional materials. Additive manufacturing technologies have rapidly matured in pursuit of geometric complexity, scalability, and reproducibility; however, similar advances in customized, application-specific engineered materials are limited. Innovations to control printed architectures across both microstructural and component levels enable the realization of advanced multi-functional, multi-material composites. Such capabilities are critical to addressing the demanding material requirements of transformative technologies including high-capacity energy storage, clean energy, and quantum computing. This research project seeks to develop, understand, and validate the application of external fields, such as acoustic fields, within additive manufacturing processes and discover the fundamental process mechanisms that enable precise spatial control over micro- and nanoparticle constituents. The cross-disciplinary nature of this research expands opportunities for interdisciplinary training and positions this project for enhancing interest K-12 students in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). This project establishes education and outreach activities directly integrated with research outcomes including: (i) an annual Additive Manufacturing Make-a-thon focused on innovative distributed manufacturing technologies, (ii) a culture-based engineering outreach program to promote careers in STEAM to Native Hawaiian students, (iii) mentored research opportunities to support STEAM education and workforce development, and (iv) curriculum innovation at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The specific goal of this research is to discover the scientific foundations for the additive manufacturing of acoustically assembled multi-scale composite materials with engineered properties resulting from deterministically ordered microstructures. A central challenge to creating nanoparticle-based composite materials is the control of the spatial distribution of nanoparticles across multiple length-scales. External fields, such as acoustic fields, have been shown to enable spatial control over microscale particles during a direct deposition additive manufacturing process. The research project proposes an acoustophoretic additive manufacturing method that combines three mechanisms to enable the continuous hierarchical assembly of bulk materials: (i) surface functionalization to create ordered/disordered micron-scale nanoparticle aggregates in solution, (ii) acoustic fields to assemble microscale aggregates into mesoscale structures, and (iii) direct deposition of these mesoscale structures into bulk components. The project combines theoretical and experimental studies to systematically investigate and reveal the fundamental principles governing the mechanics of flow-based, field-assisted additive manufacturing across multiple length scales. A key focus is to obtain a better understanding of the processing-structure-property relationships governing the use of acoustic fields to fabricate multiscale composite materials with specific, functionally-graded properties.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.