{"id":246391,"date":"2026-11-03T00:49:43","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T06:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/pulsed-3d-printing-grows-creep-resistant-single-crystals-more-than-a-meter-long-for-high-temperature-applications"},"modified":"2026-11-03T00:49:43","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T06:49:43","slug":"pulsed-3d-printing-grows-creep-resistant-single-crystals-more-than-a-meter-long-for-high-temperature-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/pulsed-3d-printing-grows-creep-resistant-single-crystals-more-than-a-meter-long-for-high-temperature-applications","title":{"rendered":"Pulsed 3D printing grows creep-resistant single crystals more than a meter long for high-temperature applications"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Researchers from China have developed a new 3D-printing process capable of building titanium-alloy rods more than a meter (3.3 feet) tall composed entirely of a single crystal. The new method, described in the team\u2019s recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11185-0\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> study in <i>Nature<\/i>, eliminates some of the constraints associated with conventional crystal-growing methods and opens up new opportunities for technical applications, ranging from reactor components to laser mirrors.<\/p>\n<p>Most metals are polycrystalline, containing many crystal grains. The boundaries of these crystal grains can become weak points under prolonged heat and stress. On the other hand, metals consisting of a single, uniform crystal structure do not have these boundaries and are valuable for high-stress and high-heat applications, such as aerospace components.<\/p>\n<p>Conventional crystal-growing methods restrict the materials, sizes and shapes manufacturers can produce. For example, the high reactivity and the high melting points of some metals create limitations for the common mold-based approach since the molds can\u2019t withstand these extremes. Meanwhile, another method, called floating-zone melting, is costly and limits allowable fabrication size and shape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from China have developed a new 3D-printing process capable of building titanium-alloy rods more than a meter (3.3 feet) tall composed entirely of a single crystal. The new method, described in the team\u2019s recently published study in Nature, eliminates some of the constraints associated with conventional crystal-growing methods and opens up new opportunities for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":630,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/630"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}