3D Printing of PLA/Magnetic Ferrite Composites: Effect of Filler Particles on Magnetic Properties of Filament

Abstract

Three-dimensional printing is one of the most promising areas of additive manufacturing with a constantly growing range of applications. One of the current tasks is the development of new functional materials that would allow the manufacture of objects with defined magnetic, electrical, and other properties. In this work, composite magnetic filaments for 3D printing with tunable magnetic properties were produced from polylactic acid thermoplastic polymer with the addition of magnetic ferrite particles of different size and chemical composition. The used magnetic particles were cobalt ferrite CoFe2O4 nanoparticles, a mixture of CoFe2O4 and zinc-substituted cobalt ferrite Zn0.3Co0.7Fe2O4 nanoparticles (~20 nm), and barium hexaferrite BaFe12O19 microparticles (<40 µm). The maximum coercivity field HC = 1.6 ± 0.1 kOe was found for the filament sample with the inclusion of 5 wt.% barium hexaferrite microparticles, and the minimum HC was for a filament with a mixture of cobalt and zinc–cobalt spinel ferrites. Capabilities of the FDM 3D printing method to produce parts having simple (ring) and complex geometric shapes (honeycomb structures) with the magnetic composite filament were demonstrated.