Vitreous carbon micro-lattice structures

A new approach is presented to fabricate open-cellular carbon materials with an ordered, lattice-type micro-scale architecture. The carbon micro-lattice materials were fabricated by pyrolyzing a polymer precursor template formed from an interconnected three-dimensional array of self-propagating photopolymer waveguides. Impregnating the polymer precursor template with acrylonitrile increased the carbon yield of the material from 19% to 46%. Structural analysis and density measurements of the solid carbon phase are consistent with vitreous carbon. Compression experiments yielded a compressive modulus (E) of 1.1 GPa and a failure strength (σf) of 10.2 MPa for a structure with relative density of 12.8%.