Multimaterial 4D Printing with Tailorable Shape Memory Polymers

By Qi Ge, A. Sakhaei, Howon Lee, Conner K. Dunn, Nicholas X. Fang, Martin L. Dunn. Scientific Reports, 2016

943 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new 4D printing approach that can create high resolution (up to a few microns), multimaterial shape memory polymer (SMP) architectures. The approach is based on high resolution projection microstereolithography (PμSL) and uses a family of photo-curable methacrylate based copolymer networks. We designed the constituents and compositions to exhibit desired thermomechanical behavior (including rubbery modulus, glass transition temperature and failure strain which is more than 300% and larger than any existing printable materials) to enable controlled shape memory behavior. We used a high resolution, high contrast digital micro display to ensure high resolution of photo-curing methacrylate based SMPs that requires higher exposure energy than more common acrylate based polymers. An automated material exchange process enables the manufacture of 3D composite architectures from multiple photo-curable SMPs. In order to understand the behavior of the 3D composite microarchitectures, we carry out high fidelity computational simulations of their complex nonlinear, time-dependent behavior and study important design considerations including local deformation, shape fixity and free recovery rate. Simulations are in good agreement with experiments for a series of single and multimaterial components and can be used to facilitate the design of SMP 3D structures.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32c09934e0a8898db5a02b261dbec33e43d4c529

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Citations in the corpus

4D printed thermally activated self-healing and shape memory polycaprolactone-based polymers (2018, background): “As for SMPs, they are widely studied due to their prospective use in a variety of technological ﬁ elds, including biomedical engineering [28,29], in vivo tissue regeneration [30], device microfabrication [11,31] and self-actuation [32].”
Shape memory behavior and recovery force of 4D printed textile functional composites (2018, methodology): “[27] developed a 4D printing approach that can create multimaterial SMP architectures using a family of photo-curable methacrylate based copo-”
Smart polymers and nanocomposites for 3D and 4D printing (2020, background): “epoxy-based resins [205]–[209] to develop intelligent structures such as actuators, robots and medical devices.”
Shape memory polymers for composites (2018, methodology): “Another example is the production of soft drive components, 4D print product can be used directly without the need to introduce complex mechanical components [27,320,321].”
Bioinks and bioprinting technologies to make heterogeneous and biomimetic tissue constructs (2019, methodology): “Photocuring methacrylate-based shape memory materials were printed with automatic material exchange system resulting programmed shape shifting architectures [195].”