The SONG Lab: Science Of Next-Gen manufacturing

About the Lab

Our research investigates how gentle and versatile material forming mechanisms found in nature can be leveraged to revitalize “age-old” manufacturing processes with enhanced sustainability and multi-scale tunability. Our current research interest focuses on ultra-low-temperature additive manufacturing (AM) of novel ceramics and composites, specifically for applications in high temperature (> 2000 °C) and high strain-rate (> 100 s-1) environments. Some unique manufacturing capabilities developed by our lab include:

• Sustainable AM of large-scale ceramics. Our hydrothermal-assisted jet fusion (HJF) process utilizes a selective cold sintering mechanism to fabricate complex ceramic structures and holds the potential to print ceramics under significantly reduced temperatures and on a larger scale.
• Versatile AM of dissimilar-phase composites. Our hydrothermal-assisted multi jet fusion (HMJF) process can seamlessly integrate dissimilar materials in a single volume, including ceramic-polymer, ceramic-metal, etc., enabling novel structural and functional properties. 
• Versatile AM of energetic composites. Our pressure-assisted multi-jet fusion (P-MJF) process can locally tailor energetic crystals at the microscale, achieving energetic composites with highly tailorable compositions and microstructures.