POLARONYX INC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 17a

Description

Additive manufacturing (AM), esp. laser AM, becomes a powerful tool to replace conventional methods such as casting and hot spray, due to its cost effectiveness and capability of making complex structure and composition. However, direct fabrication of high temperature thin walls and multi-material radial collimators (such as Boron and Al) is still a challenging field, mainly due to limited understanding of composition control, laser melting control, and melted structure formation and phase transition. Based on our patented laser AM technology and the world’s first product of fs fiber laser AM, PolarOnyx proposes, for the first time, a hybrid AM/SM system to overcome these difficulties and meet the requirement of making radial collimators. Our AM system will use hybrid powder bend and feeder technique and ultrafast laser technique to control melting temperature, thin wall thickness, and feeding powders with micron level precision. With NDI feedback, its melting temperature can be controlled with pulse repetition rate and energy. The microstructure can be controlled by tuning the pulse width. Its feeding rate can be controlled by mixed powder assisted by fs laser ablation. This system is readily convertible to subtractive manufacturing (SM) to do machining and process micro- structures, without adding extra cost. In addition to the metal 3D AM applications, material processing is another major commercial application for this project. This includes (1) Photonic device fabrications, such as waveguide, coupler, WDM, modulator, and switching; (2) all types of metal processing such as welding, cutting, annealing, and drilling; (3) semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturing such as lithography, inspection, control, defect analysis and repair, and via drilling; (4) marking of all materials including plastic, metals, and silicon; (5) other materials processing such as rapid prototyping, desk top manufacturing, micromachining, photofinishing, embossed holograms, and grating manufacturing.