Page 30 - MSAM-1-3

Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Preparation of polyamide 6 and its titanium

dioxide photocatalytic composite powders for
laser powder bed fusion

2
Peng Chen , Zhaoqing Li , Sheng Liu , Jin Su , Haoze Wang , Lei Yang ,
1
1
1
1
1
Chunze Yan *, Yusheng Shi 1
1
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
Abstract

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing is an effective method to
prepare three-dimensional ordered network titanium dioxide (TiO ) photocatalytic
2
materials, therefore enhancing the absorption intensity of incident light and
improving the photocatalytic efficiency. However, TiO is difficult to be directly
2
sintered by LPBF due to the high melting point and brittleness. In this study, we
prepared a polyamide 6 (PA6)-coated TiO photocatalytic composite powder for LPBF
2
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/TiO composite powder presents a near-spherical porous-surfaced
2
*Corresponding author: morphology, a high specific surface area of 240.5 m /kg, an appropriate Dv(50) of 48.8
2
Chunze Yan μm, and a wide sintering window of 26.6°C, indicating a good LPBF processability
(c_yan@hust.edu.cn)
and potential of the photocatalytic application.
Citation: Chen P, Li Z, Liu S,
et al., 2022, Preparation of
polyamide 6 and its titanium dioxide Keywords: Additive manufacturing; Laser powder bed fusion; Photocatalytic material;
photocatalytic composite powders
for laser powder bed fusion. Mater Polyamide 6; Titanium dioxide
Sci Add Manuf. 1(3): 14.
https://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i3.14
Received: July 6, 2022 1. Introduction
Accepted: August 9, 2022
Titanium dioxide (TiO ) photocatalytic materials have the advantages of stable
Published Online: August 24, 2022 2
chemical properties, good photoelectric characteristics, high catalytic activity, and good
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). accessibility [1,2] . These advantages promote their widespread use in the photocatalytic
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the degradation of environmental pollutants, self-cleaning, solar cells, and photolysis of
Creative Commons Attribution water for hydrogen production, thus facilitating their broad applications in energy,
License, permitting distribution, environmental protection, and medical health fields [3-6] . However, TiO has the problems
and reproduction in any medium, 2
provided the original work is of the low utilization rate of sunlight and low catalytic efficiency. The electrons in excited
properly cited. state and holes can be easily combined, resulting in low photocatalytic reaction efficiency

Volume 1 Issue 3 (2022) 1 https://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i3.14