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Northwestern University‘s associate professor of mechanical engineering Tao Sun and collaborators have published new research showing that the atomic-level arrangement of liquid metal, not just cooling rate and temperature gradient, governs how grain structures form during laser additive manufacturing.
The findings, published in Nature Communications under the title “Operando X-ray scattering reveals ordering-mediated solidification in additive manufacturing,” give the industry a new, atomic-scale lever for predicting and controlling microstructure in printed metal parts.
A Blind Spot in Metal Solidification
Laser powder bed fusion and other laser additive manufacturing (LAM) processes can already produce advanced components for aerospace, medical, and energy applications, but the resul