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3D Printing

3D Printing
3D Printed object with unique internal microstructure (top left, credit: Kokkinis), Self-locking printed gripper (top right, credit: Kokkinis, 3D Printing of emulsions into hierarchical porous material  (bottom, credit: Minas)

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies offer a versatile platform for the on-demand fabrication of customized products in a decentralized and cost-effective fashion. Besides its traditional use as a tool for rapid prototyping or for the small-scale production of customized items, additive manufacturing has also been exploited as a means to fabricate components with unusual shapes in a wide range of fields from architecture to medicine to anthropology. An even more enticing feature that has only recently started to be explored is the use of AM technologies to create materials with locally tuned chemical compositions and intricate microstructures that are not accessible by conventional processing routes. The exploration of this feature has been driven and inspired by the complex architectures of biological materials made by living organisms in nature.

The selected publications below provide examples of research projects under this thematic area:

external pageA.R. Studart, Additive manufacturing of biologically-inspired materials, Chemical Society Reviews, 45 (2) 359-376 (2016).

external pageC. Minas, D. Carnelli, E. Tervoort, A.R. Studart, 3D Printing of Emulsions and Foams into Hierarchical Porous Ceramics, Advanced Materials, 10.1002/adma.201603390 (2016).

external pageD. Kokkinis, M. Schaffner, A.R. Studart, Multimaterial magnetically assisted 3D printing of composite materials, Nat Commun, 6 Article number 8643 (2015).

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