Bactericidal Lubricating Synthetic Materials for Three-Dimensional Additive Assembly with Controlled Mechanical Properties

Abstract

3D printable synthetic materials have been developed to realize desired surface and mechanical properties. Lubricating synthetic surfaces have broad technological impacts on many applications including food packaging, microfluidic systems, and biomedical devices. However, combining soft materials with lubricants leads to significant phase separation and swelling phenomena, together with lowered mechanical strength, impeding full utilization of lubricating synthetic surfaces with desired shapes in a highly controllable manner. Here, we report a new platform to create a 3D printable lubricant–polymer composite (3D-LUBRIC) for the seamless fabrication of multidimensional structures with diverse functionalities. The rationally designed lubricant–polymer mixtures including silica aerogel particles not only exhibit suitable rheological properties for direct ink writing without phase separation but also enable the deterministic additive assembly of heterogeneous materials, which have large mismatches of oil permeability, with no distinct shape distortion. While exhibiting excellent lubricating properties for a variety of liquids, 3D-LUBRIC shows tunable mechanical properties with desired functionalities, such as optical transparency, flexibility and stretchability, and anti-icing and antibacterial/bactericidal properties. We employ the proposed platform to fabricate self-cleanable containers and antibacterial/bactericidal medical tubes. Our platform can offer new opportunities for building low-adhesive, multifunctional synthetic materials with customized shapes for diverse applications.

Recent advancement and trends in the development of membranes having bactericidal attributes via direct ink writing

“…Other techniques for giving polymer-based membranes antibacterial qualities include mixing oils with biodegradable and biocompatible polymers, like PCL, PEO, etc., which also gives the polymers excellent mechanical properties and properties like selfcleaning [62], anti-icing [63], and anti-biofouling [64] that are derived from oils [65]. These oilpolymer composites are referred to as 3D-LUBRIC or 3D printable polymer-lubricant composites [66,67]. Two primary challenges in synthesizing these composites were (i) the need for a homogeneous mixture of liquid and oil polymers during printing to prevent sedimentation and (ii) the requirement that the homogenous solution has rheological characteristics compatible with the printing apparatus.…”

“…The blend was printed via extrusion-based apparatus since the composites were very elastic and retain their shape even after printing. The addition of SAP particles enhances the rheological properties of the composites in addition to improving blending [66]. Since the main characteristic of these composites is their elastic nature, they can be used to construct a variety of flexible medical-grade membranes.…”

Controlled Integration of Interconnected Pores under Polymeric Surfaces for Low Adhesion and Antiscaling Performance

“…As another strategy, pressure-stable slippery surfaces with self-healing properties have been developed by infusing lubricants to structured surfaces or to planar polymeric materials. − Low-adhesive properties of slippery surfaces with enhanced pressure stability have been successfully demonstrated, but lubricant depletion issues remain to be resolved for achieving long-term stability to maintain low-adhesive properties. − To resolve the depletion issues, rationally mixing lubricants with liquid-state polymer successfully controlled cross-linking densities of polymers and generated interfacial slippage phenomena with durable slippery surfaces . Further development of lubricant–polymer composites was carried out by employing silica aerogel particles to hold lubricants within a polymer matrix, which not only realized controllable mechanical properties but also considerably suppressed lubricant depletion . In addition, synthesizing silicone-based organogels with low-modulus and lubricating particles realized low-adhesive surfaces with icephobicity by employing stress localization phenomena on the planar surfaces .…”

Scalable wear resistant 3D printed slippery liquid infused porous surfaces (SLIPS)

“…The fabrication of the complex surface morphology has remained a big challenge till now because of the cost of processing such a fine resolution micro-and nano-porous surface. To address this, various high resolution 3D printing techniques have been used in recent years which tend to offer high level of control on final form [35,36]. Thereafter, liquid entrapment is carried out directly or after further post-processing of the printed surface.…”