Laser Sintering

In space manufacturing of electronics

In space manufacturing is a focus area of NASA investigating the capability to print electronics on demand in space using printed technology. The current state-of-the-art printers, deposit ink as nanoparticles and not a continuous film. Our work looks into the integration of a laser to sinter the nanoparticles to generate films with required electrical properties.   Fundamentally a laser is used to deposit heat, and the research looks in to the effect of such a heat transport with the variation of substrate, ink, film thickness and modalities.