Development and characterization of polymers-metallic hot embossing process for manufacturing metallic micro-parts

In the recent years, hot embossing process becomes a promising process for the replication of polymer micro-structures associated to its manufacturing capability related to a relatively low component cost. This rising demand has prompted the development of various micro-manufacturing techniques in an attempt to get micro-parts in large batch. The paper investigates the way to get metallic micro-parts through the hot embossing process. The micro-manufacturing process consists in three stages. In the first one, the different metallic feedstocks with 50 to 60% powder loading in volume have been prepared with adapted polymers/powders formulations. In a second stage, an elastomeric master has been used to obtain micro-parts on a plastic loaded substrate with developed mixture based on polypropylene, paraffin wax and stearic acid. Finally, a thermal debinding stage in nitrogen atmosphere followed by a solid state pre-sintering stage has been applied, in order to eliminate the pores between powder particles in the debinded components. Then the porous components are agglomerated by solid state diffusion after heating to a temperature slightly lower than the melting temperature related to the material used in the process, to form an homogenous structure when full densification is achieved. The advantages of this approach include: rapid manufacturing of injection tools with high-quality, easy demoulding of metallic parts from the elastomeric moulds and great flexibility related to the choices of material. The paper describes all the processing stages and the way to characterize the geometrical, physical and mechanical properties of the resulting micro-parts.