Mechanical and microwave absorption properties of 3D-printed Li0.44Zn0.2Fe2.36O4/polylactic acid composites using fused deposition modeling

3D printing technology has attracted more and more interest in rapid manufacturing of components with complex shapes by pre-design. In the present work, various content of Li0.44Zn0.2Fe2.36O4 (LZFO) particles as reinforcement were added to polylactic acid (PLA) matrix for preparing 3D-printed composites by using fused deposition modeling (FDM). The structure and morphological characteristics were systematically examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Furthermore, mechanical, thermal and microwave absorption properties of 3D-printed LZFO/PLA composites with different contents were investigated in detail. Tensile strength and Young's modulus of the LZFO/PLA composite with 10wt% LZFO content were remarkably improved than that of original PLA. Thermal stability of the composite with 5wt% LZFO content was the best among the test specimens. Microwave absorption property suggested that the reflection loss (R-L) of the composite with 20wt% LZFO can reach -32.4dB at 3.8GHz and -31.8dB at 16.1GHz with the thickness of 6mm, and the effective bandwidth corresponding to R-L (-10dB) reaches 2.1GHz (3.1-5.2GHz) and 1.8GHz (14-15.8GHz). Therefore, 3D-printed LZFO/PLA composites prepared by FDM can be an incredibly promising novel 3D printable microwave absorption candidate with other comprehensive properties. Moreover, microwave absorbing materials prepared by 3D printing technology especially using FDM may become the development trend of this kind of materials in the future.