Recent Progress in 3D Printing of 2D Material‐Based Macrostructures

Abstract

2D materials have a range of unique properties and are promising building blocks for the fabrication of macroscopic materials for many applications ranging from flexible electronics to energy storage devices. The development of effective methods to fabricate 2D material‐based macroscopic materials with designed structures is the key to enabling high performance. Lately, 3D printing has emerged as a new technique to assemble such materials. Compared to conventional fabrication methods, 3D printing techniques have a high degree of customization of the structure with a broad range of domain sizes from nanometers to centimeters, and thereby give the resulting products additional structure‐related functionalities. Recent advances in the fabrication of 2D material‐based macrostructures using 3D printing techniques and their uses in different fields are reviewed. Challenges and opportunities for the future development of the topic are also discussed.

2D material hybrid heterostructures: achievements and challenges towards high throughput fabrication

“…Extrusion-based 3D printing is an additive manufacturing technology that offers the possibility to rapidly fabricate (i.e., hours) complex self-supporting three dimensional architectures with tuneable mechanical properties at low cost, with high precision (i.e., resolution: 50 -200 μm) and close to zero waste. 47,92,93 This technique employs a X,Y,Z-motion nozzle or stage to assemble 3D structures by extruding a continuous ink filament at room Please do not adjust margins Please do not adjust margins temperature in a layer-by-layer fashion, upon computerised control. [94][95][96] The viscoelastic ink materials (i.e., viscosity: 5 -500 000 mPa s; 2D material loading: 12-40 w% rapid drying time; selfsupporting) must present a shear thinning behaviour to facilitate the extrusion process, and enable shape retention after deposition.…”

“…47,92,93 This technique employs a X,Y,Z-motion nozzle or stage to assemble 3D structures by extruding a continuous ink filament at room Please do not adjust margins Please do not adjust margins temperature in a layer-by-layer fashion, upon computerised control. [94][95][96] The viscoelastic ink materials (i.e., viscosity: 5 -500 000 mPa s; 2D material loading: 12-40 w% rapid drying time; selfsupporting) must present a shear thinning behaviour to facilitate the extrusion process, and enable shape retention after deposition. 97,98 By careful design, printed 3D macrostructures of 2DMs can present enhanced mechanical properties, such as high stretchability and negative Poisson's ratio in the case of graphene, 99,100 while retaining the inherent properties of the monolayers (e.g., high electrical/thermal conductivity, surface area, mechanical properties, etc.).…”

“…Moreover, the applied axial force induced alignment of 2DMs during printing is beneficial for the formation of interconnected 3D networks fostering high thermal/electrical conductivity. 94 This technology has for example enabled the development of highly stretchable graphene-based electronics, 101 addressing the issue of conductivity loss of printed planar electronics under large deformations (i.e., low stretchability) 102 avoiding the use of elastomeric polymers compromising conductivity. 103,104 Worsley et al, reported in 2015 highly compressible lightweight graphene 3D printed aerogel microlattices, displaying supercompressibility (∼ 90% compressive strain) while maintaining the large surface area of single graphene sheets.…”

Plant-Morphing Strategies and Plant-Inspired Soft Actuators Fabricated by Biomimetic Four-Dimensional Printing: A Review

“…The establishment of mathematical models and motion design catalogs is required to predict the fourth dimension (Boley et al, 2019;Kanu et al, 2019). 4D printing is a new manufacturing paradigm that produces tunable intricate 3D structures induced from the 2D counterpart (Yang et al, 2020). In addition, it is a disruptive strategy to construct dynamic structures that can alter their structure, function in a scheduled way (Montero de Espinosa et al, 2017), which has a variety of applications in MEMS (Sundaram et al, 2017), soft robots (Gul et al, 2018), sensors (Tseng et al, 2018), deployable mechanism (Yang et al, 2019), active arts and costume (Sun et al, 2020), and controlled release medicine (Durga Prasad Reddy and Sharma, 2020).…”

Effect of Different Selenium Precursors on Structural Characteristics and Chemical Composition of Cu2ZnSnSe4 Nanocrystals

“…Up to date, research topics related to the development of electronic elements and devices using two-(2D) and three-dimensional (3D) printing techniques are developed rapidly. These techniques are affordable, versatile, economical, and waste-free that can signi cantly simplify the development manufacturing process and reduce production costs [1,2,3]. In addition, there is possibility to apply a wide range of substrates, including exible, because such technologies are low-energy and do not require heating the substrates up to thermal degradation [4][5][6][7][8][9][10].…”