journal of materials processing technology 206 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 194–201 journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec LZSA glass-ceramic laminates: Fabrication and mechanical properties Cynthia M. Gomes a , Antonio P.N. Oliveira a , Dachamir Hotza a,∗ , Nahum Travitzky b , Peter Greil b a Group of Ceramic and Glass Materials (CERMAT), Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), 88040-900 Florian´ opolis, SC, Brazil b Department of Materials Science, Institute of Glass and Ceramics, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany article info Article history: Received 21 June 2007 Received in revised form 8 November 2007 Accepted 4 December 2007 Keywords: Glass ceramics Tape casting Rapid prototyping Factorial design abstract The aim of this work was to fabricate LiO 2 –ZrO 2 –SiO 2 –Al 2 O 3 (LZSA) glass-ceramics lam- inates by laminated object manufacturing (LOM) and to characterise some properties of the laminates before and after sintering. Correlations between green tape properties, pro- duced by aqueous tape casting, and the green and sintered laminate properties were also determined. Processing optimisation was based on a factorial design. The microstructure of the LZSA glass-ceramic laminates showed a homogeneous distribution of porosity and the main phases were identified as being -spodumene and lithium metasilicate. Laminates with a 0 ◦ /90 ◦ layer orientation attained a significantly higher bending strength of 120 MPa compared to 70 MPa for the 90 ◦ /90 ◦ orientation. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction LiO 2 –ZrO 2 –SiO 2 –Al 2 O 3 (LZSA) glass ceramics present some interesting properties: e.g. good chemical and thermal shock resistances and a very low thermal expansion coefficient (4–6 × 10 -6 ◦ C -1 )(Giassi et al., 2006). Additionally, this sys- tem can be processed at low sintering temperatures (<650 ◦ C), which turns it interesting as a new raw material for appli- cations such as low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) in microelectronic devices (Dernovsek et al., 2001). These ceramics have been processed by different tech- niques as powder injection moulding, extrusion and tape casting (Giassi et al., 2006; Montedo et al., 2004; Gomes et al., 2006). However, some advanced applications require more complex geometries as well as lower processing time. Rapid prototyping (RP) techniques are being increasingly used in a wide range of ceramic processes due to the via- ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: dhotza@gmail.com (D. Hotza). bility of producing these complex structures. Among all commercially available RP techniques, laminated object man- ufacturing (LOM) offers the possibility to use green ceramic tapes in the construction of three-dimensional structures. This inherent capacity of the process to handle with flat sheet materials associated with the possibility to produce geomet- rically complex objects and to operate with a high degree of automation, without special tooling, turns this technique commercially viable (Klosterman et al., 1997). The high load of ceramic powder on the cast tapes com- position (>40 wt%) requires the use of some adhesive agents (such as double-side adhesive tapes or diluted binder solu- tions) essential to the LOM process. This procedure, often used for low pressure lamination (Piwonski and Roosen, 1999; Baud´ ın et al., 2005), promotes the interconnection between the adjacent tapes since the boundary between the tapes should be undetectable after compression. 0924-0136/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2007.12.011