DLP 3D printing of high strength semi-translucent zirconia ceramics with relatively low-loaded UV-curable formulations

DLP 3D printing is one of the additive manufacturing techniques, which allows the fabrication of ceramic parts with a complex shape, precisely controlled internal architecture and fine surface finishing. The method is based on the layer-by-layer solidification of a photosensitive ceramic suspension via UV-light projection followed by debinding of organic components and sintering and generally requires a high solid content of the ceramic filler to achieve good sintered densification. The present article aims to explore the possibility of fabricating high strength, fully dense and semi-translucent zirconia parts with relatively low-loaded UV-curable systems using a low-cost desktop DLP printer designed for printing polymers. For the slurry preparation, tetragonal zirconia powders from three different suppliers were evaluated. It was shown that with 35 vol% of zirconia content slurries, it was possible to fabricate zirconia semi-translucent ceramics with a density of 99.6%. No cracks or pores larger than 1 μm were observed on the sintered parts. According to ball-on-3-ball mechanical tests performed on the 13 × 1 mm discs an average flexural strength of the printed zirconia ceramics was 1566 MPa and a maximum of 1964 MPa could be achieved.