Liquid metal corrosion sculpture to fabricate quickly complex patterns on aluminum

A liquid metal enabled corrosion sculpture technique for quickly fabricating complex patterns on aluminum substrate is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. According to the conceptual investigation, it is clarified that the width and the depth of a printed track are dominated by sculpture time and working temperature. The printed size can reach small values of 38 μm through controlling the sculpture time for 60 s. As the sculpture time was increased from 5 to 25 min at 20°C, the depth of the fabricated pattern was improved from 13.3 to 25.6 μm. The sculptured depth of the pattern would increase from 13.3 to 106.9 μm when the sculpture time was fixed at 5 min and the temperature was raised from 20 to 60°C. To investigate the sculpture behavior in detail, the phases and microstructure of sculpture surface were quantitatively measured via a group of microscope imaging system with fundamental mechanisms interpreted. The present liquid metal sculpture method on aluminum substrate adds a new valuable soft tool for current metal engraving technology family.