Additive manufacturing of Ti-6242 lattice structures: manufacturability limits and mechanical performance of solid and hollow strut architectures

Metallic lattice metamaterials achieve exceptional mechanical performance through the synergy of topological architecture and parent material properties. Despite this dual dependence, development has remained largely confined to a limited set of alloys—namely aluminum (AlSi10Mg), stainless steel (SS316L), and Ti-6Al-4V (Ti-64). These materials, however, share a critical limitation: poor suitability for sustained high-temperature service. This work breaks that paradigm by presenting the first comprehensive study on the laser-based powder bed fusion (PBF-LB) manufacturability and compressive response of the high-temperature titanium alloy Ti-6Al-2Sn-4Zr-2Mo (Ti-6242), implemented in both solid- and hollow-strut lattice architectures. A systematic manufacturability study established geometric limits: solid struts down to 0.3 mm in diameter, and hollow struts with a wall thickness of 0.1 mm and a minimum inner diameter of 0.6 mm. Beyond these minimum feature constraints, the manufacturability window was further explored by fabricating simple cubic (SC) and octet-truss (OT) topologies in solid and hollow strut configurations. The resulting lattices spanned relative densities ( ) from 3.5% to 57.54%, with compressive strengths ranging from 4.2 ± 0.28 MPa to 460 ± 4.5 MPa. Benchmarking against Ti-64 lattices reveals that Ti-6242 delivers strength enhancements up to 48.6 ± 1.8% in ultimate strength and 62.8 ± 0.1% in yield strength at identical . Collectively, this work provides a processing–structure–property database for Ti-6242 lattice metamaterials and establishes a new materials trajectory beyond Ti-64 for additively manufactured architected structures.