Poly ether ether ketone and its composite powder prepared by thermally induced phase separation for high temperature selective laser sintering.

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is one of the advanced additive manufacturing technologies which can build the geometrically complex structure from a three-dimensional CAD model. Poly ether ether ketone (PEEK) is one of the available materials for SLS and has received numerous interesting due to its excellent properties. In this research, a novel approach, thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) was employed to produce neat PEEK and PEEK/CNT composite powders with near spherical shape, desired particle size and size distribution for SLS application. Powders produced by TIPS demonstrated good flowability and processability. SEM images proved that CNT was embedded in PEEK powder. PEEK/CNT composite powder had shown an increased crystallinity in comparison with neat PEEK powder. Sintering rate of produced powders were studied with hot stage microscopy. Single layer films were built successfully by high temperature selective laser sintering (HT-SLS) using the powder developed via TIPS. Thermodynamics characteristics of single layer films were studied by DMA. Results revealed that addition of 0.1% CNT improved both storage and loss modulus of PEEK. PEEK powder is prepared by TIPS and laser sintered into 3D component by HT-SLS Unlabelled Image • The first study on preparation of PEEK and PEEK/CNT composite powders by TIPS. • Resulting powders have near spherical shape and preferred particle size for SLS application. • Resulting powders have shown good flowability and processability. • Powders have been successfully sintered into single layer films in the HT-SLS system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]