Carbon periodic cellular architectures

The first carbon periodic cellular architectures derived from 3D printing, in the form of new tetrakaidecahedra meshes, are reported and investigated in this paper. They were prepared in hydrothermal conditions by a template method based on polymer periodic structures of the same geometry, and fabricated by a 3D printer using photocurable resin. Several formulations based on resorcinol-formaldehyde were tested, and the best ones were those using low concentrations of resorcinol at 150 °C in a pressurised solution of nickel nitrate. After pyrolysis at 1000 °C, catalytic graphitisation was demonstrated by TEM, XRD and Raman studies. The higher was the amount of nickel, the higher was the resultant graphitisation level. Mechanical tests were also carried out on such extremely lightweight periodic carbon structures, showing that these new materials present a much higher modulus than carbon foams of similar bulk densities.