Meniscus-confined electrochemical additive manufacturing of copper microstructures: Design, fabrication, characterization, and decorative art technology

For the first time, a room-temperature meniscus-confined electrochemical additive manufacturing (MC-ECAM) process is evaluated as a potential decorative art technology for fabricating copper metal. The MC-ECAM has proven to be an excellent method for large-scale printing of decorative copper artworks such as warli art, plant leaves, and paintings. The inherent nature of the MC-ECAM process has the potential to eliminate the traditional time-consuming route to producing such copper microstructures and provide a one-step and efficient solution. The TEM and FE-SEM results revealed that well-oriented microstructures are prepared without surfactant, indicating the ECAM self-assembly mechanism. A small amount of zinc is added to the copper system to prevent corrosion. The XRD analysis also revealed the formation of copper metal, which barely changed even after 10 months of atmospheric ageing with the addition of 2% zinc. The XPS results show that zinc provides excellent stability for the ECAM-printed copper microstructure, further examined by an electrochemical corrosion study. Zinc act as a barrier to corrosion, and the results show that the Cu-Zn 2% exhibits excellent corrosion resistance than the pure copper microstructures.