A High-Temperature Thermocouple Development by Additive Manufacturing: Tungsten-Nickel (W-Ni) and Molybdenum (Mo) Integration with Ceramic Structures

TL;DR

This paper presents the development of high-temperature thermocouples using additive manufacturing to embed tungsten, molybdenum, and antimony pastes into ceramic structures, enabling accurate temperature sensing in extreme environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel additive manufacturing process for embedding conductive metal pastes into ceramics to create high-temperature sensors with high accuracy and reliability.

Findings

Sensors operate reliably at high temperatures

High correlation (R-squared 0.9885) with conventional sensors

Additive manufacturing enables complex ceramic-based sensor design

Abstract

Additive manufacturing holds more potential to enable the development of ceramic-based components. Ceramics offer high resistance to heat, high fracture toughness, and are extremely corrosion resistant. Thus, ceramics are widely used in sectors such as the aerospace industry, automotive, microelectronics, and biomedicine. Using various additive manufacturing platforms, ceramics with complex and uniquely designed geometry can be developed to suit specific applications. This project aims at innovating high-temperature thermocouples by embedding conductive metal pastes into a ceramic structure. The paste used includes tungsten, molybdenum, and antimony. The metal pastes are precisely extruded into a T-shaped trench inside the ceramic matrix. Following specific temperature ranges, the ceramic matrix is sintered to improve the properties of the material. The sensors produced can function at extremely high temperatures and are thereby suitable for high-temperature environments. Comparative testing of the 3D sintered sensors with conventional temperature sensors shows high correlation between the two classes of sensors. The resulting R-squared value of 0.9885 is satisfactory which implies the reliability and accuracy of 3D sintering sensors are satisfactory in temperature sensing applications.