Micro-Architected Metallic Lattices for Lunar Dust Mitigation

Lunar dust is composed of extremely fine, abrasive, electrostatically-charged particles that damage equipment and threaten human health on long term and crewed exploration missions. Current mitigation strategies address individual challenges, but this requires unique procedures both during terrestrial equipment preparation and lunar environment studies, drastically limiting lunar exploration. By developing a hybrid technique involving both passive features to minimize surface contact area and active features to electrostatically remove charged dust, we will address a wide range of applications in an effort to standardize operational procedures and lower energy required to minimize dust adhesion. We propose accomplishing this by producing a conductive architected structure with microscale surface features using hydrogel infusion additive manufacturing (HIAM), an emerging technology for producing metallic architected structures of fine feature resolution and tunable composition. We will develop a repeatable method for fabricating high resolution (ranging from 100 nm to 50 um) metallic lattices of various metal compositions, such as alloys and refractory metals. These architectures' ability to withstand extreme temperatures and cyclic mechanical loading during equipment deployment and extravehicular activity on long duration missions will be studied. Finally, the architected metals' potential for dust mitigating applications will be demonstrated through studies experimentally determining the structure geometry's influence on the electric field produced.

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