Industrial potential of additive manufacturing of transparent ceramics: A review

Transparent ceramics is a unique class of materials, with performance comparable to single crystals, but a high process flexibility given by ceramic technology. Currently, traditional ceramic shaping technologies reliably produce components but are limited in terms of shapes and the use of multiple compositions in a single component. The presented review aims to illustrate how the introduction of additive manufacturing (AM) technology in the production of transparent ceramic components opens new possibilities, both thanks to the high variability of shapes and thanks to the high precision in producing parts with a controlled variation of composition. Within this review, several AM techniques and their current state of the art are analysed, with focus on their advantages in producing transparent ceramics, along with the associated challenges and limitations. The future perspective and possibilities for an industrial production are discussed, with emphasis on the most promising AM techniques, direct ink writing and vat photopolymerisation, pointing out the future scenario for the transparent ceramics market.