In-situ monitoring of laser powder bed fusion on multi-material substrates for electric mobility

The growth of electromobility has driven the demand for advanced power electronics. Meeting the increasing functional requirements necessitates innovative manufacturing solutions. A promising approach involves combining traditional processes with additive manufacturing technologies. This paper focuses on a novel approach, which involves laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) to fabricate high-performance cooling structures directly on a Direct Bonded Copper (DBC) substrate made of a ceramic core sandwiched between two copper layers. This innovative method allows enhancing the cooling performance, but it introduces challenges, including residual stresses, substrate warpage, and ceramic layer cracking. To address these issues, this work presents a novel in-situ monitoring approach for LPBF of pure copper on multi-material substrates. By leveraging multi-sensor data fusion with efficient in-line processing, the proposed approach allows a fast detection of anomalies and defects.