Materials for Stereolithography

Stereolithography (SL) is a rapid prototyping method for three-dimensional polymer part fabrication [3, 34, 49, 53, 63]. The technique is based on the process of photopolymerization, in which a liquid resin is converted into a solid polymer under laser irradiation [4, 34]. The models are produced by curing successive layers of the resin material until a three-dimensional object is formed. The advantages of stereolithography are its flexibility in manufacturing parts with different geometries and dimensions, its accuracy and its quickness. The challenge is to extend the stereolithography method to directly fabricate parts with complex shapes and good mechanical properties [30, 47, 58]. Recently, polymer/ceramic composite were successively fabricated by stereolithography [29, 46, 52, 62]. The manufacturing process requires the formulation of a photoreactive medium containing a photocurable resin and powders prior to laser exposure. Once polymerized, the photopolymer constitutes a though matrix around ceramic particles.