Data Collection: Electrohydrodynamic redox printing vs magnetron sputtering: Enhancing hardness of nanoporous silver with twinning and structural order

Electrohydrodynamic redox printing (EHD-RP), is a high resolution additive manufacturing technique which can produce complex 3D metal alloys that allows for the fabrication of np metal structures. To determine the influence of this additive manufacturing process on the mechanical properties, we compare EHD-RP derived np-Ag to films made via magnetron sputtering.

Samples fabricated by EHD-RP exhibit higher hardness than sputtered films for similar relative densities as demonstrated with nanoindentation. To explain these differences we used FIB-tomography to quantify structural features in the np networks including ligament width, relative density, connectivity, and topology. Materials factors like twin density and grain size were investigated using STEM analysis.