Reprocessable thermosets for sustainable three-dimensional printing

Abstract

Among all three-dimensional (3D) printing materials, thermosetting photopolymers claim almost half of the market, and have been widely used in various fields owing to their superior mechanical stability at high temperatures, excellent chemical resistance as well as good compatibility with high-resolution 3D printing technologies. However, once these thermosetting photopolymers form 3D parts through photopolymerization, the covalent networks are permanent and cannot be reprocessed, i.e., reshaped, repaired, or recycled. Here, we report a two-step polymerization strategy to develop 3D printing reprocessable thermosets (3DPRTs) that allow users to reform a printed 3D structure into a new arbitrary shape, repair a broken part by simply 3D printing new material on the damaged site, and recycle unwanted printed parts so the material can be reused for other applications. These 3DPRTs provide a practical solution to address environmental challenges associated with the rapid increase in consumption of 3D printing materials.

Advances in 4D Printing: Materials and Applications

“…e) Demonstration of the ability of the material to repair flawed printed structures of a damaged rabbit. Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2018, Macmillan Publishers Limited.…”

Designing with Light: Advanced 2D, 3D, and 4D Materials

“…Ge and co‐workers have used a photoinduced 3D printing system to fabricate self‐healing materials with tunable mechanical properties . To induce the self‐healing properties in these materials, a network with dynamic covalent bonds (DCBs) was synthesized.…”

“…4D printing of self‐healable materials . A) A demonstration of stiffness change of a printed Kelvin foam before and after thermal treatment.…”

“…C) Self‐healing ability of the material to repair flawed printed structures: surgery on a damaged rabbit. Reproduced under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons CC‐BY 4.0 International License . Copyright 2018, The Authors, published by Springer Nature.…”

Freestanding 3D Mesostructures, Functional Devices, and Shape‐Programmable Systems Based on Mechanically Induced Assembly with Shape Memory Polymers

“…Complex 3D functional architectures are of widespread interest due to their potential applications in biomedical devices, metamaterials, energy storage and conversion platforms, and electronics systems . Although existing fabrication techniques such as 3D printing, templated growth, and controlled folding can serve as powerful routes to diverse classes of 3D structures that address requirements in a number of interesting technologies, each has some set of limitations in materials compatibility, accessible feature sizes, and compatibility with well‐developed 2D processing techniques used in the semiconductor and photonics industries . Despite significant efforts in research and development, there remains a need for methods that provide access to complex 3D mesostructures that incorporate high‐performance materials.…”