Single shot, large area metal sintering with micrometer level resolution

- This paper presents the optics design for a microscale Selective Laser Sintering (μ-SLS) system that aims to allow large areas of nanoparticles to be sintered simultaneously while still maintaining micrometer scale feature resolutions in order to improve the throughput of the microscale additive manufacturing process. The optics design is shown to be able to sinter a 2.3 mm by 1.3 mm area of metal nanoparticles that have been spread into a ~400 nm thick layer with a feature resolution of ~3 μm in a single shot. The optical resolution of this system is shown to be ~1.2 μm indicating that only about 2-3 pixels are needed to form a good sintered part. In addition, using the optical design presented in this paper, it is estimated that the μ-SLS system should be able to achieve a volumetric throughput of ~63 mm3/hr, making this process one of the highest throughput processes available today for the microscale additive manufacturing of three-dimensional metal structures.